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Like I said, the original post I replied to seemed to say they couldn't imagine the dishes getting done without money: "He wants everyone to suddenly stop using

Like I said, the original post I replied to seemed to say they couldn't imagine the dishes getting done without money: "He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes?" I'm fairly certain the Iroquois didn't need to trade wampum with other bands to get the dishes washed? Just like you said you don't need to pay someone in your family to do the dishes, families (and friends, and Iroquois villages, etc) help each other without needing money. I didn't say that one can construct a modern economy without money, just that the dishes could still get washed, like a lot of other small scale transactions, in response to someone who may have thought that such things are not possible. Are you trying to prove me wrong, that humans cannot possibly organize activities amongst themselves without wampum of some sort? You mentioned families doing things for each other, which might be a better example than I brought up. (I do appreciate the discussion though, I've learned a couple things along the way. But I'm not sure if we disagree, or are going on tangents.)

kalenx 5y ago
I think scale is the key here. You can do that within a family, you might do that within a village, perhaps in some perfect circumstances you will be able to do that within a group of a few 1000's people, but never at the scale of our societies. It's not about the type of society or people, it really has to do with the number. You'll have a much harder time convincing someone to work for someone else he doesn't know at all...
- mikem170 5y ago
  Agreed. I never said that no-money would work at the scale our modern society is used to working at. I brought up the idea that smaller scale societies have functioned without money, though. My thinking is that lack of money wouldn't stop the dishes from being washed, but would stop bigger projects.
samatman 5y ago
> humans cannot possibly organize activities amongst themselves without wampum of some sort Yes, insofar as every band of humans has edges, and on those edges money is a hard prerequisite. We've coevolved with it since the dawn of anatomical modernity, the burden of proof is very much on anyone who wishes to claim that that we can get along without it. I guess I consider the existence of activities, even economic ones which don't involved the exchange of money, to be trivial? Like it's obvious they exist, it isn't saying very much to point them out? I spent a lot of my youth in an ashram with up to about 10,000 people in it, and the dishes got washed. The breakdown of that kind of basic uncompensated labor in small (usually flat/anarchist) communes says more about their inability to escape atomization than about the possibility of doing so. I don't get the sense we're disagreeing about much if anything here, though. Perhaps choosing to emphasize different pieces of the puzzle.

kalenx 5y ago

I think scale is the key here. You can do that within a family, you might do that within a village, perhaps in some perfect circumstances you will be able to do that within a group of a few 1000's people, but never at the scale of our societies. It's not about the type of society or people, it really has to do with the number. You'll have a much harder time convincing someone to work for someone else he doesn't know at all...

mikem170 5y ago
Agreed. I never said that no-money would work at the scale our modern society is used to working at. I brought up the idea that smaller scale societies have functioned without money, though. My thinking is that lack of money wouldn't stop the dishes from being washed, but would stop bigger projects.

samatman 5y ago

> humans cannot possibly organize activities amongst themselves without wampum of some sort Yes, insofar as every band of humans has edges, and on those edges money is a hard prerequisite. We've coevolved with it since the dawn of anatomical modernity, the burden of proof is very much on anyone who wishes to claim that that we can get along without it. I guess I consider the existence of activities, even economic ones which don't involved the exchange of money, to be trivial? Like it's obvious they exist, it isn't saying very much to point them out? I spent a lot of my youth in an ashram with up to about 10,000 people in it, and the dishes got washed. The breakdown of that kind of basic uncompensated labor in small (usually flat/anarchist) communes says more about their inability to escape atomization than about the possibility of doing so. I don't get the sense we're disagreeing about much if anything here, though. Perhaps choosing to emphasize different pieces of the puzzle.