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Technically you can have economies that don't operate with money; economies are just a (not necessarily good) quantitative lens to analyze human behavior.
by dnautics 5y ago
Technically you can have economies that don't operate with money; economies are just a (not necessarily good) quantitative lens to analyze human behavior.
- h0l0cube 5y agoI never made an assertion to the contrary, but I think economies are also useful for permitting specialization (and hence supply chains, to create more complex goods) and amortizing local disruptions to supply (e.g. food stores, trade) and probably a bunch of other useful things. They can also enable large scale waste, environmental destruction, debt traps, extreme inequality etc
- dnautics 5y agoNo you're still misunderstanding. Even in for example, a super primitive society, there are, say "obligation economies" that exist even though nobody inside the society is using it to understand their situation. Likewise, in a modern society there are economies of waste, economies of environmental destruction etc. The "economies" are just quantitative frameworks for understanding human interaction.
- h0l0cube 5y agoAh sure, I suppose I'm talking about what pops into mind when most people here the word 'economy', but certainly there's more going on as you've noted. When I use the word, I'm talking something a more to do with the systems of trade of goods and services, currency, etc. - the health of such systems are the concern of many anti-lockdown proponents.