6 ms·

"Money corrupts everything" BS. One of the only things Ayn Rand got right was her view of money: it is one of the greatest forces for good humans have ever i

"Money corrupts everything" BS. One of the only things Ayn Rand got right was her view of money: it is one of the greatest forces for good humans have ever invented. Money allows us to settle our disputes without violence; money is what enables peaceful trade; money is how we moved beyond palace economies. Sure, money can corrupt some things, but on the whole money has likely saved many lives and in all likelihood the free societies we have today could never have existed without a monetary system.

spacedcowboy 5y ago
Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. Instead of “I will give you 3 apples from my tree for a dozen eggs from your hens”, there is an indirection through a standardized property - money. Now we can say my apples are worth 4 shekels each and your eggs are worth 1 shekel each, and we can still agree on the same transaction. The difference (some would argue, improvement) is that shekels have a worth of their own, so can be stored against harder times, which may not have been possible with the goods they bought. Of course, that shekel value being variable over time, can equally lead to riches or ruin, and requires a more sophisticated treatment by perhaps insufficiently sophisticated participants; snakes and ladders. In any event, societies existed well before this “money” thing came along, even free ones. High technology societies do need a money system, I think; for automated transactions to take place, there needs to be a standardized good-exchange valuation, but not all high-tech societies are free, and not all free societies are high-tech. Freedom seems orthogonal to money.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  >Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. I think we are all in agreement there. But it has such sophistication and is so amazingly efficient that it has an intrinsic value as a mere concept. This is because it enables activities that would otherwise be impossible. A good analogy would be a computer program. This i think is where we differ. But i think it's obvious that money is more than "nothing"- after all it sustains the entire banking industry. >The difference (some would argue, improvement) is that shekels have a worth of their own, so can be stored against harder times Again this isn't (and was never) the true reason for money. It was only a security against the money and helped people to visualise the concept better (i know i'm oversimplifying but i think that's the basic idea)
- robocat 5y ago
  > Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. Money is the core of a distributed optimisation system. How does society decide whether to fix a pothole, eat some oranges, advertise a game? The hugely complex chain of suppliers is balanced via money - every actor in the chain is optimising locally using profit as the objective function. Legal agreements are the mechanism to ensure the money flows for the correct goods/services, and society sets constraints (laws/regulations) to enforce goals that are not monetary. The economics 101 narrative for how money was created is an extremely limited view.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Money allows us to settle our disputes without violence" What? Money is the cause of like70% of all violence
- noirbot 5y ago
  Sure, but if it's 70% of the remaining smaller pie of violence, that's still an improvement. If money wasn't a thing, you wouldn't be like "Relationships cause 70% of violence. Relationships are the root of all evil"
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "70% of the remaining smaller pie of violence, that's still an improvement." What leads you to believe that the pie is smaller than it was without money? I have never seen any kind of statistics like "hunter gatherers had more wars". How you you even formulate the null hypothesis for this?
    - noirbot 5y ago
      I'm not claiming that I can back up that statistic, just pointing out that the state of something being an issue in the status quo doesn't mean it couldn't have been a net advantage over what it replaced.
- bmitc 5y ago
  I fully agree that money is a serious problem, but I have come to the conclusion that the true source of violence in society is simply humans. Everything else is simply a medium or catalyst for violence.
tauwauwau 5y ago
I agree with you to a certain extent, also I didn't mean to disregard the value that money provides by giving us a way to assign a quantifiable value to things. That's entirely different and in that way it can be counted as one of the greatest innovations in human history. I was talking about the human greed that is exploited by money. Also, if you're going to fight a war with another country, money doesn't mean much does it? Unless you have a global currency that both sides can agree on. Ultimately wars were fought for resources (Non ideological ones). Money is just paper/coins which you can print anytime you want if you control the resources.
pfortuny 5y ago
Like lust, laziness, envy, pride, and wrath… Avarice is one of the primary wrong impulses. Yes. What have we done with love, mercy…

spacedcowboy 5y ago

Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. Instead of “I will give you 3 apples from my tree for a dozen eggs from your hens”, there is an indirection through a standardized property - money. Now we can say my apples are worth 4 shekels each and your eggs are worth 1 shekel each, and we can still agree on the same transaction. The difference (some would argue, improvement) is that shekels have a worth of their own, so can be stored against harder times, which may not have been possible with the goods they bought. Of course, that shekel value being variable over time, can equally lead to riches or ruin, and requires a more sophisticated treatment by perhaps insufficiently sophisticated participants; snakes and ladders. In any event, societies existed well before this “money” thing came along, even free ones. High technology societies do need a money system, I think; for automated transactions to take place, there needs to be a standardized good-exchange valuation, but not all high-tech societies are free, and not all free societies are high-tech. Freedom seems orthogonal to money.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
>Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. I think we are all in agreement there. But it has such sophistication and is so amazingly efficient that it has an intrinsic value as a mere concept. This is because it enables activities that would otherwise be impossible. A good analogy would be a computer program. This i think is where we differ. But i think it's obvious that money is more than "nothing"- after all it sustains the entire banking industry. >The difference (some would argue, improvement) is that shekels have a worth of their own, so can be stored against harder times Again this isn't (and was never) the true reason for money. It was only a security against the money and helped people to visualise the concept better (i know i'm oversimplifying but i think that's the basic idea)
robocat 5y ago
> Money is nothing but a sophisticated barter system. Money is the core of a distributed optimisation system. How does society decide whether to fix a pothole, eat some oranges, advertise a game? The hugely complex chain of suppliers is balanced via money - every actor in the chain is optimising locally using profit as the objective function. Legal agreements are the mechanism to ensure the money flows for the correct goods/services, and society sets constraints (laws/regulations) to enforce goals that are not monetary. The economics 101 narrative for how money was created is an extremely limited view.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"Money allows us to settle our disputes without violence" What? Money is the cause of like70% of all violence

noirbot 5y ago
Sure, but if it's 70% of the remaining smaller pie of violence, that's still an improvement. If money wasn't a thing, you wouldn't be like "Relationships cause 70% of violence. Relationships are the root of all evil"
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "70% of the remaining smaller pie of violence, that's still an improvement." What leads you to believe that the pie is smaller than it was without money? I have never seen any kind of statistics like "hunter gatherers had more wars". How you you even formulate the null hypothesis for this?
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I'm not claiming that I can back up that statistic, just pointing out that the state of something being an issue in the status quo doesn't mean it couldn't have been a net advantage over what it replaced.
bmitc 5y ago
I fully agree that money is a serious problem, but I have come to the conclusion that the true source of violence in society is simply humans. Everything else is simply a medium or catalyst for violence.

tauwauwau 5y ago

I agree with you to a certain extent, also I didn't mean to disregard the value that money provides by giving us a way to assign a quantifiable value to things. That's entirely different and in that way it can be counted as one of the greatest innovations in human history. I was talking about the human greed that is exploited by money. Also, if you're going to fight a war with another country, money doesn't mean much does it? Unless you have a global currency that both sides can agree on. Ultimately wars were fought for resources (Non ideological ones). Money is just paper/coins which you can print anytime you want if you control the resources.

pfortuny 5y ago

Like lust, laziness, envy, pride, and wrath… Avarice is one of the primary wrong impulses. Yes. What have we done with love, mercy…