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Ultimately we all need food, shelter, clothing, and other things of decreasing necessity. The way we get those things is to trade something of value; few of us
by throwawayboise 5y ago
Ultimately we all need food, shelter, clothing, and other things of decreasing necessity. The way we get those things is to trade something of value; few of us are capable of producing everything we need by ourselves. We all have different talents and abilities, but most of us find something to do that produces value for someone else. So that we don't have to directly trade e.g. eggs for a plumbing repair, we invented money so that the value we each produce could be abstracted into something that is acceptable in trade for anything else we need.
Money is an abstraction for the value of productive work. We must each produce enough value that we can trade it for the things we need. It's also why univeral income will never work. If money is given to someone in exchange for nothing, it is worth nothing.
- gruez 5y ago>Money is an abstraction for the value of productive work. We must each produce enough value that we can trade it for the things we need. It's also why univeral income will never work. If money is given to someone in exchange for nothing, it is worth nothing. But we're literally handing money to people in exchange for nothing right now (ie. welfare), yet US dollars are worth something.
- reidjs 5y agoOne way to interpret welfare is the government paying off people who have no capacity to be productive from interfering with people who are productive. If the needy did not get “free money” they would have to resort to crime, which negatively affects others.
- netizen-936824 5y agoRather the environment they live in has no investment or opportunity and the people living their, being poor and dealing with the hand that local investment in education has dealt them have difficult times getting out, let alone just surviving