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Why do you have to work for money while they can create it? That seems to be a fundamental thing nobody can adequately answer - let alone control issues.

tastyfreeze 5y ago
The short answer is that is the way they made it. They being people in power corrupted by greed and megalomania. Originally only gold and silver were money. You could trade for money or dig it out of the ground. If you brought your gold to a government mint it would be made into coins of known purity and weight. Government coins were a trusted unit for trade. However, gold money limits what a government can spend due to a natural physical limit on supply. The primary benefit of gold money is nobody can conjure 100,000 tonnes ($6.43T) out of thin air for their own benefit. That puts the government on more equal footing with the people.
- Qworg 5y ago
  It also limits how large an economy can grow and how fast it can do so - so the oligarchs more easily remain oligarchs.
- legulere 5y ago
  It's much more likely that money started out from debt/obligation systems. Coins for immediate payment stayed pretty uncommon except between parties that didn't trust each other for a pretty long time. With fiat money the government acts as a trusted third party. Early taxes like the tithe were also not money-based.
astrange 5y ago
The purpose of money is to trick farmers into producing food for everyone else so nobody starves. Any system where that happens is working acceptably. The inflationary fiat system is better at it than the gold standard - you'll recall there was a great depression and people were unhappy about it. The luxury space communism idea where everyone just gets infinite money unfortunately has no evidence it'd work, because the farmers wouldn't believe you. The earlier systems, historical communism and feudalism, worked without money because you'd just have the farmers killed if they complained, but obviously that was problematic.
- rswail 5y ago
  "The luxury space communism idea" usually has an expressed or implied removal of scarcity as an issue. If there's unlimited supply of goods and services, then there is no need for money. On the other hand, most sci-fi of this nature also has semi-military structures and the military is the ultimate form of communism.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Yes, my issues are: 1. your idea probably isn't post-scarcity, you've just forgotten that the goods/services you want to automate have inputs themselves that still cost something. 2. if robots are smart enough to produce everything for us, they're probably human-level intelligent, could be customers instead of producers themselves, and so you've actually rediscovered slavery.
amusedcyclist 5y ago
Because money for a person is different from money for a government. "Creating money" generally means increasing the ability for banks to give out loans, which spurs economic activity like starting a new business etc

tastyfreeze 5y ago

The short answer is that is the way they made it. They being people in power corrupted by greed and megalomania. Originally only gold and silver were money. You could trade for money or dig it out of the ground. If you brought your gold to a government mint it would be made into coins of known purity and weight. Government coins were a trusted unit for trade. However, gold money limits what a government can spend due to a natural physical limit on supply. The primary benefit of gold money is nobody can conjure 100,000 tonnes ($6.43T) out of thin air for their own benefit. That puts the government on more equal footing with the people.

Qworg 5y ago
It also limits how large an economy can grow and how fast it can do so - so the oligarchs more easily remain oligarchs.
legulere 5y ago
It's much more likely that money started out from debt/obligation systems. Coins for immediate payment stayed pretty uncommon except between parties that didn't trust each other for a pretty long time. With fiat money the government acts as a trusted third party. Early taxes like the tithe were also not money-based.

astrange 5y ago

The purpose of money is to trick farmers into producing food for everyone else so nobody starves. Any system where that happens is working acceptably. The inflationary fiat system is better at it than the gold standard - you'll recall there was a great depression and people were unhappy about it. The luxury space communism idea where everyone just gets infinite money unfortunately has no evidence it'd work, because the farmers wouldn't believe you. The earlier systems, historical communism and feudalism, worked without money because you'd just have the farmers killed if they complained, but obviously that was problematic.

rswail 5y ago
"The luxury space communism idea" usually has an expressed or implied removal of scarcity as an issue. If there's unlimited supply of goods and services, then there is no need for money. On the other hand, most sci-fi of this nature also has semi-military structures and the military is the ultimate form of communism.
- astrange 5y ago
  Yes, my issues are: 1. your idea probably isn't post-scarcity, you've just forgotten that the goods/services you want to automate have inputs themselves that still cost something. 2. if robots are smart enough to produce everything for us, they're probably human-level intelligent, could be customers instead of producers themselves, and so you've actually rediscovered slavery.

amusedcyclist 5y ago

Because money for a person is different from money for a government. "Creating money" generally means increasing the ability for banks to give out loans, which spurs economic activity like starting a new business etc