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> are the cars going to vanish if the debts aren't paid for a year? No, but the retirees who depend on the income from bonds packaged from those debts will be

> are the cars going to vanish if the debts aren't paid for a year? No, but the retirees who depend on the income from bonds packaged from those debts will be screwed. Also, cars might not vanish but they do depreciate regardless of whether money exists. That's still a cost incurred by the rental company even though no money changes hands when it happens. Ultimately the car companies were overleveraged and were forced to exit before their "positions" in cars became profitable. There's nothing short of the state propping you up that can solve that. Even the Soviet Union had money and had to deal with economical realities. One of the reasons they collapsed was because of increasing grain production deficits causing an imbalance of trade. You can't legislate your way out of the market because the market's invisible hand will always show eventually, even if you can stave it off via state control of everything.

quacked 5y ago
Yeah, but the retirees depending on the income is just a second-order effect that's also screwed up due to money. Retirees don't depend on money changing hands, they depend on crops getting grown, shelter being refurbished (or built), and defense under the law. The only reason people agree to do all of those actions for the retirees is that money changes hands. I'm not necessarily saying that I think money is a bug. It might be a feature. But the "market's invisible hand" relies on people being more motivated by their wealth stash than their behavior. If everyone chose to keep doing the same physical actions they're doing today except we stopped swapping money, nothing observable in reality would change; people would die at the same rate, food would be stored at the same rate, etc. "The economy" is in reality a giant standoff where every member of the standoff would just stop maintaining society unless they get paid for it. The grocer could theoretically choose to continue to man the store 12 hours per day, and then the doctor could theoretically choose to treat the grocer when he gets sick, and the truck driver could theoretically choose to ship the medication from the plant to the hospital, and the floor worker could theoretically choose to...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > But the "market's invisible hand" relies on people being more motivated by their wealth stash than their behavior. Nobody has found a better way, though they often try. > "The economy" is in reality a giant standoff where every member of the standoff would just stop maintaining society unless they get paid for it. That's an immutable fact of human nature. Even cradle to grave propaganda doesn't change it. It's much better to swim with that current than against it.
  - quacked 5y ago
    > Nobody has found a better way, though they often try. This I agree with. > That's an immutable fact of human nature. Even cradle to grave propaganda doesn't change it. This I disagree with. Past societies saw far more social cohesion at points than our modern one. Especially on certain smaller scales, people were more willing to assist one another in the act of remaining alive without being compensated financially. For instance- many people now think it would be unreasonable to help a friend move without some form of reward (money, food, etc.) This sort of value exchange for reward would be considered disrespectful in many past cultures and even some present cultures. Unwillingness to work without immediate reward not an immutable fact of human nature.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Helping out your friends and locals now and then is also normal human behavior. But it does not extend to running a society that way, and never has. It is rooted in building a network of mutual obligation, a common trait in small communities. It's not really considered a "reward" or payment. > Unwillingness to work without immediate reward not an immutable fact of human nature. Yeah, it is, as no society has managed to make that work as an organizing principle. Even the Israeli kibbutzen have failed. Altruism rarely extends beyond family and close friends, and even then, it isn't reliable.
      - xwdv 5y ago
        Altruism basically means you are working for favors instead of money. However, people are much more likely to default on favors owed to you because it is harder to compare the value of one favor to another, and this creates opportunity to return a favor that is worth less than the one you were given.
- bzbarsky 5y ago
  On the one hand, yes of course the economy is all about specialization and then exchanging the fruits of specialized production between people. This last can happen via money, or barter, or a dictator (benevolent or not) confiscating everything and redistributing it, or some mix of the above, and maybe other methods. One of the hard problems here is what to specialize in and to what extent. This is a hard problem to solve even in a static economy, and even harder if circumstances keep changing... The "standoff" description seems to assume a static economy. If circumstances change, maybe we as a society need a grocer for only 4 hours a day but could use an extra half-shift truck driver. But how to discover that?
  - quacked 5y ago
    I have absolutely no idea how or even if that could be discovered, which is why my original comment was more about expressing frustration than offering a solution. I do know that several things going on currently will make it more impossible to discover: increased financialization of commodities, outsourcing, destruction of culture via removal of differentiating markers, etc. If any society is going to discover the half-shift truck driver economy, they're going to be one that is almost entirely self-sustaining and committed to perpetuation of itself, not one that is leveraged up to the eyeballs, suffers from a total lack of manufacturing expertise within its component citizens, and relies on cheap foreign labor to make everything.
- saltcured 5y ago
  It seems like you're focusing on a loss of money as a "stick" (punishment) and saying we could ignore that and just keep operating as usual. But it's also the "carrot" (motivation) signalling the demand and value placed on the activity by others. In the end, aren't all the money and ledgers are just a way to simplify the ridiculously complex trades required to make modern society work? We don't want to have to exchange sacks of rice and live chickens when we see the doctor and he doesn't want to have to get those chickens converted into barley or whatever it is the medical supply company owner wants this week. If you remove this signal, you don't just remove a threat of stagnation. You also remove efficiency signals to curtail under-valued work. Just as easily, the participants could do other absurd things instead. The grocer could keep performing shelf-stocking actions while the shelves and back storage area are empty. The doctor could decide they prefer to drive around in an empty delivery truck, while the truck driver decides to sit in the clinic and talk to patients about the weather. Etc.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    >You also remove efficiency signals to curtail under-valued work. I'd argue that the typical diffuse ownership structures you find in most consumer-facing businesses today has the same effect, if not as absolute. The people who see the economic signals and they people with on-the-ground knowledge are split up: a sort of business logic hemispherectomy.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Money itself isn't the bug. It's the ability to abuse money to disconnect yourself from the real economy. How easy it is to abuse money depends on how it is designed. When people save money perishable goods like food are sitting on the shelves waiting to be bought, then money will outstay its welcome. The food is gone but the money is still there. “Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money. So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange." — Silvio Gesell, “The Natural Economic Order”
  - chii 5y ago
    > make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange This describes inflation, in so many words. That's why central banks targeting a low level inflation is an excellent idea - it makes people spend money, rather than save. Spending can include investment to stave off inflation's effects - which, in turn, makes for increases in productivity over all.
    - snikeris 5y ago
      Inflation incentivizes debt, debt leads to fragility, and then we're surprised when things break.
- phaedrus 5y ago
  This is sort of a reply to several of your comments in this thread about how we could still do all the things we do if money didn't exist. Your point reminds me of something a co-worker once said; he pointed out that "profit" is another name for "inefficiency." That is, in another context or agnostic of value-judgements, the difference between input and output which forms "profit" would be looked at as an inefficiency or defect in any other system.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  >notice how weakened this entire process is as a result of revolving around money >not necessarily saying that I think money is a bug. It might be a feature. Yup, looks to me like the problem is not the existence of money, rather its nonexistence. Financial problems don't actually occur when there is no lack of money.
imtringued 5y ago
>No, but the retirees who depend on the income from bonds packaged from those debts will be screwed. I agree that retirees are wholly dependent on others to work for them and therefore I recognize their right to save for retirement. However, if your investment/savings turn out to be worthless then that is on you. It's better to signal these failures as soon as possible so that people are aware of the risk. Think about it this way. You acquire "healthcare coupons" during your working age and then all the businesses accepting "healthcare coupons" have shut down. The coupons are worthless. Yet when you replace "healthcare coupons" with money, people insist that even if there aren't enough workers to work in healthcare, that money must maintain its value and they should even be owed more than they saved even though there is nobody to provide those services. This is why inflation is a necessary evil. It tells you what's really going on in the world. People will present inflation as theft but the truth is that your money is losing its value because it should be losing its value. Just because e.g. gold is free of inflation doesn't mean that there will be healthcare services waiting at the start of your retirement to accept that gold. It's just pure speculation.
- gjs278 5y ago
  can you stop posting in this thread? everything you are saying is nonsense.

quacked 5y ago

Yeah, but the retirees depending on the income is just a second-order effect that's also screwed up due to money. Retirees don't depend on money changing hands, they depend on crops getting grown, shelter being refurbished (or built), and defense under the law. The only reason people agree to do all of those actions for the retirees is that money changes hands. I'm not necessarily saying that I think money is a bug. It might be a feature. But the "market's invisible hand" relies on people being more motivated by their wealth stash than their behavior. If everyone chose to keep doing the same physical actions they're doing today except we stopped swapping money, nothing observable in reality would change; people would die at the same rate, food would be stored at the same rate, etc. "The economy" is in reality a giant standoff where every member of the standoff would just stop maintaining society unless they get paid for it. The grocer could theoretically choose to continue to man the store 12 hours per day, and then the doctor could theoretically choose to treat the grocer when he gets sick, and the truck driver could theoretically choose to ship the medication from the plant to the hospital, and the floor worker could theoretically choose to...

WalterBright 5y ago
> But the "market's invisible hand" relies on people being more motivated by their wealth stash than their behavior. Nobody has found a better way, though they often try. > "The economy" is in reality a giant standoff where every member of the standoff would just stop maintaining society unless they get paid for it. That's an immutable fact of human nature. Even cradle to grave propaganda doesn't change it. It's much better to swim with that current than against it.
- quacked 5y ago
  > Nobody has found a better way, though they often try. This I agree with. > That's an immutable fact of human nature. Even cradle to grave propaganda doesn't change it. This I disagree with. Past societies saw far more social cohesion at points than our modern one. Especially on certain smaller scales, people were more willing to assist one another in the act of remaining alive without being compensated financially. For instance- many people now think it would be unreasonable to help a friend move without some form of reward (money, food, etc.) This sort of value exchange for reward would be considered disrespectful in many past cultures and even some present cultures. Unwillingness to work without immediate reward not an immutable fact of human nature.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Helping out your friends and locals now and then is also normal human behavior. But it does not extend to running a society that way, and never has. It is rooted in building a network of mutual obligation, a common trait in small communities. It's not really considered a "reward" or payment. > Unwillingness to work without immediate reward not an immutable fact of human nature. Yeah, it is, as no society has managed to make that work as an organizing principle. Even the Israeli kibbutzen have failed. Altruism rarely extends beyond family and close friends, and even then, it isn't reliable.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      Altruism basically means you are working for favors instead of money. However, people are much more likely to default on favors owed to you because it is harder to compare the value of one favor to another, and this creates opportunity to return a favor that is worth less than the one you were given.
bzbarsky 5y ago
On the one hand, yes of course the economy is all about specialization and then exchanging the fruits of specialized production between people. This last can happen via money, or barter, or a dictator (benevolent or not) confiscating everything and redistributing it, or some mix of the above, and maybe other methods. One of the hard problems here is what to specialize in and to what extent. This is a hard problem to solve even in a static economy, and even harder if circumstances keep changing... The "standoff" description seems to assume a static economy. If circumstances change, maybe we as a society need a grocer for only 4 hours a day but could use an extra half-shift truck driver. But how to discover that?
- quacked 5y ago
  I have absolutely no idea how or even if that could be discovered, which is why my original comment was more about expressing frustration than offering a solution. I do know that several things going on currently will make it more impossible to discover: increased financialization of commodities, outsourcing, destruction of culture via removal of differentiating markers, etc. If any society is going to discover the half-shift truck driver economy, they're going to be one that is almost entirely self-sustaining and committed to perpetuation of itself, not one that is leveraged up to the eyeballs, suffers from a total lack of manufacturing expertise within its component citizens, and relies on cheap foreign labor to make everything.
saltcured 5y ago
It seems like you're focusing on a loss of money as a "stick" (punishment) and saying we could ignore that and just keep operating as usual. But it's also the "carrot" (motivation) signalling the demand and value placed on the activity by others. In the end, aren't all the money and ledgers are just a way to simplify the ridiculously complex trades required to make modern society work? We don't want to have to exchange sacks of rice and live chickens when we see the doctor and he doesn't want to have to get those chickens converted into barley or whatever it is the medical supply company owner wants this week. If you remove this signal, you don't just remove a threat of stagnation. You also remove efficiency signals to curtail under-valued work. Just as easily, the participants could do other absurd things instead. The grocer could keep performing shelf-stocking actions while the shelves and back storage area are empty. The doctor could decide they prefer to drive around in an empty delivery truck, while the truck driver decides to sit in the clinic and talk to patients about the weather. Etc.
- Talanes 5y ago
  >You also remove efficiency signals to curtail under-valued work. I'd argue that the typical diffuse ownership structures you find in most consumer-facing businesses today has the same effect, if not as absolute. The people who see the economic signals and they people with on-the-ground knowledge are split up: a sort of business logic hemispherectomy.
imtringued 5y ago
Money itself isn't the bug. It's the ability to abuse money to disconnect yourself from the real economy. How easy it is to abuse money depends on how it is designed. When people save money perishable goods like food are sitting on the shelves waiting to be bought, then money will outstay its welcome. The food is gone but the money is still there. “Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money. So we must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange." — Silvio Gesell, “The Natural Economic Order”
- chii 5y ago
  > make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange This describes inflation, in so many words. That's why central banks targeting a low level inflation is an excellent idea - it makes people spend money, rather than save. Spending can include investment to stave off inflation's effects - which, in turn, makes for increases in productivity over all.
  - snikeris 5y ago
    Inflation incentivizes debt, debt leads to fragility, and then we're surprised when things break.
phaedrus 5y ago
This is sort of a reply to several of your comments in this thread about how we could still do all the things we do if money didn't exist. Your point reminds me of something a co-worker once said; he pointed out that "profit" is another name for "inefficiency." That is, in another context or agnostic of value-judgements, the difference between input and output which forms "profit" would be looked at as an inefficiency or defect in any other system.
fuzzfactor 5y ago
>notice how weakened this entire process is as a result of revolving around money >not necessarily saying that I think money is a bug. It might be a feature. Yup, looks to me like the problem is not the existence of money, rather its nonexistence. Financial problems don't actually occur when there is no lack of money.

imtringued 5y ago

>No, but the retirees who depend on the income from bonds packaged from those debts will be screwed. I agree that retirees are wholly dependent on others to work for them and therefore I recognize their right to save for retirement. However, if your investment/savings turn out to be worthless then that is on you. It's better to signal these failures as soon as possible so that people are aware of the risk. Think about it this way. You acquire "healthcare coupons" during your working age and then all the businesses accepting "healthcare coupons" have shut down. The coupons are worthless. Yet when you replace "healthcare coupons" with money, people insist that even if there aren't enough workers to work in healthcare, that money must maintain its value and they should even be owed more than they saved even though there is nobody to provide those services. This is why inflation is a necessary evil. It tells you what's really going on in the world. People will present inflation as theft but the truth is that your money is losing its value because it should be losing its value. Just because e.g. gold is free of inflation doesn't mean that there will be healthcare services waiting at the start of your retirement to accept that gold. It's just pure speculation.

gjs278 5y ago
can you stop posting in this thread? everything you are saying is nonsense.