Money...Money...Money!

[red team]

Let me lend you money with interest and I'll be a rich man...

...Muhahahaha!!! :lol:

Money As Debt (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=money+as+debt)

[red team]

The problem of social irresponsibility, inequality and poverty amidst luxury that Capitalism produces has more fundamental roots than simply greed. That's just too simple an explanation the problem goes much deeper. It has more to do with how economies up to the present day confuses and combines (with no reasonable justification actually) objective cost in production with something as subjective as consumer demand.

For example, how much material and energy to run machines to make a specific car model? Would the material cost change significantly if production were to take place in any other arbitrary location? If physical cost in materials needed and energy required are fixed then why are prices for manufacture up for haggling as it is now when sweatshop produced goods in third world countries produce units for a lot less than what can be produced in developed countries? In terms of material cost of feeding the workers and the physical amount of materials the cost are the same. Here's something else to think about. The amount of foreign investment by American corporations was a lot less in the 1960's than now yet Americans had a better quality of life during the 60's than now. A single full time working person can support an entire family of four and factories were booming. Why is it then that it is too expensive to pay workers now more for their work in manufacturing than in the past and so shutdown factories that are perfectly physically capable of making products. Wouldn't it make more sense to build more factories since physical products available to the population means more wealth? Why would it be "expensive" to make something that is a generator of wealth thus reducing scarcity which means making things cheap? What does it mean to have an "expensive" factory? Isn't that a contradiction in terms of a physical economy.

So what is it that money really measures anyway if it measures anything at all. In my opinion money doesn't measure anything at all since the value of money itself is subjective and up for negotiation. If that is the case then why are we using money to pay for the cost of physical manufacture when money itself is not a device for quantifying objective costs? Further, consumer demand isn't really up for haggling. You either want a product or you don't. The price of a product would make it more difficult for you to acquire more "expensive" products, but that really is separate from your desire for a product. If you don't have money to acquire something, but you still want it then doesn't change the fact that you still desire it. If you're homeless and starving the fact that food cost more than what you have doesn't change the fact that you have "demand" for food. Further, the physical cost of manufacture isn't really up for haggling either. Would a car still be half functional if it has half the materials necessary to make a fully functional one? If that is not true then why is the prices of commodities variable in purchase price? Shouldn't it be fixed to physically quantifiable costs and demand simply be a binary value of true if you desire a product and false if you don't desire it.


What I am proposing is an entirely different model for evaluating the cost of goods and services. Our present model of using money is nothing more than a glorified form of the stone-age bartering system with money being the substitutes for clam shells, so now instead of bartering directly you have clam shells, chunks of metal or pretty pieces of paper for proxy bartering which is quite an improvement :rolleyes: . In a society where the majority of products and services is made through manual labour a system of barter would make logical sense where you record a debt owed to you for your productive efforts in labouring for someone else's benefit when you rather be labouring for your own benefit.

But, there are two glaring flaws with this approach to the economy when modern technology replaces most of the necessity for manual labour while magnifying the productive power of the few remaining jobs that still require manual labour. Think of power generation plants, factories and farms for instance.

But, first a bit of history. Money being a device for recording debt would make somewhat logical sense when I trade you some amount of currency to record a debt I owe you. It works well enough in a primitive tribal economy where x number of pots were traded for y number of elephant tusks and nobody permanently owns anything that people depend on to produce their trading items, like land for planting crops and grazing livestock for instance. Now, put into your society the legal justification for owning tracts of land where people depend on making their items of trade and you've just altered the property of currency. It is now not just a device for the recording of debt, but a means of social control especially when what can now be owned is not simply trade items made from the corresponding effort of individuals or groups, but vitally important environments where these (often life sustaining) items are made. This is essentially the summary of Marx's complaint of the moneyed elite ownership of the means of production, but even without taking it further into surplus value extraction through the taking of profits on top of what should already be owed corresponding to the bartered value of labour performed by the workers, the money traded to the labourers for work must eventually flow back to the people having legal ownership of the all the environments where work depends on taking place like farmland for instance. Everything produced through labour within that environment must be also owned by the people having legal ownership of that environment even though the labour that made that environment productive is not intrinsic to it to begin with. Think about it. Are you an intrinsic part of your work place? No? So, how is it that what is done by you in any given environment not also owned by you, but owned by the owners of the work environment? Using a device of barter given this setup wouldn't help much as it has morphed pretty much into a form of social control when you have to trade your working wage in debt tokens (money) given by the owners for what is often life sustaining goods that is also owned by the owners. You basically have a circular trade where the money given by the owners must also be given back to the owners for items workers produced to sustain themselves therefore having a class of owners permanently wealthy relative to a class of workers is inevitable given any system where production facilities is owned and I'm not simply talking about the favourite scape goat of the left, Capitalism, either. It was well known that soviet commissars and party members lived in mansions (daschas) and had access to special shops where luxuries unavailable to the working commoners was sold. What you will inevitably have with Communism with money used for proxy bartering and state ownership of production facilities is state Capitalism.

Now, if you add technology into the mix you have a system which makes even less sense. As a system of proxy barter with money it's completely unmanageable and doesn't make any sense at all. How do you pay for something in any justifiable bartering sense for something that is provided free of labour? Being that money is a device for the recording of a debt owed for services rendered, how do you record a debt from electricity generated from a hydro-electric dam? When you're paying money to an energy company are you then paying for the "labour" produced by the fuel used in running the generators? Next, what about machine assisted human labour that far exceed the productive potential of unaided human labour alone. For example, a full-day running factories by pressing buttons (there are few labour intensive factories nowadays at least in the developed industrial world) would produce far more than the value in money of what was paid to a worker given what was expended by the worker alone. How do you record a debt on that? Should you pay the worker the full amount of the value of what was produced with machine assistance? But, then how is it that you owe the worker that much in debt for what is not entirely his/her efforts? If you pay the worker simply for his/her efforts then where or who should the huge extra value in money returned from sold production in excess of bare human labour go to? The owners? Given what justification?

Further, it is not just a matter of corruption and the desire to control by those who are able to hoard the most money, but that money by the very way it is used in trade cannot be able to record a debt reliably so even by this criteria as a form of debt tokens it fails in its function.

Take for example how consumable items are traded with money in which physical objects which loses its utility after consumption does not correspond to the traded with money which retains its value and utility as a medium of exchange for an item of corresponding value even when the item on opposite side of the money accounting equation has been destroyed. Next, take the opposite side of this arrangement in which money which remains relatively stable in purchasing power for the bearer can be used to purchase items that can be increase accumulated value for the owner to more than what was originally paid for with money. Factories, farms and other means of production come to mind. Taken together, these two flaws of money where it can be used to trade for consumable items (all physical items are eventually consumed) and also be traded for production assets which can produce items that increase accumulated value far beyond the cost of the production asset makes the forming of a money hoarding elite all but inevitable.

Subjective devices like human guards against corruption as well as redistribution of money simply doesn't work for correcting what essentially is an physical accounting problem using a very flawed device to a record trade. Guards can be corrupted and adjusting money value and the quantity possessed by every actor in an economy to reflect every single consumption and production activity is simply impossible.

The alternative: New system, new rules and new ways of accounting for costs. The bartering system is obsolete whatever embellishments it may have. A physical, objective, reality-based accounting system is the future.

Technocracy Europe (http://www.technocracyeurope.eu/)

[colonelguppy]

i odn't see anyhting wrong with people lending money and charging interest rates, it ensures responsible allocaiton of recources. if theres no increased rate there's less incentive to engage in more succesful enterprise.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Yes, but responsible does not always mean successful. One could borrow money, do all the right things, take good care of one's finances, and yet the market could take an unfavourable turn unexpectedly, or they could simply be run out of business by a multinational and be at nothing. Alternatively, money mightn't be borrowed for entrepreneurial purposes; it could be that a family simply have too much things going on financially right now, and simply have to borrow to pay the bills. Then they might not be able to afford the repayments, not because they are being irresponsible with their money, but quite simply because they aren't on a high enough salary.

[colonelguppy]

Originally posted by [email protected] 02, 2007 06:02 pm
Yes, but responsible does not always mean successful. One could borrow money, do all the right things, take good care of one's finances, and yet the market could take an unfavourable turn unexpectedly, or they could simply be run out of business by a multinational and be at nothing. Alternatively, money mightn't be borrowed for entrepreneurial purposes; it could be that a family simply have too much things going on financially right now, and simply have to borrow to pay the bills. Then they might not be able to afford the repayments, not because they are being irresponsible with their money, but quite simply because they aren't on a high enough salary.
i guess for this discussion "responsible" would basically mean succesful.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Well in that case I'm not sure I'm with you; I don't see how an interest rate ensures successful allocation of resources. The market will not mould itself to my whim because I have Shylock on my back.

[red team]

Originally posted by colonel retard
i odn't see anyhting wrong with people lending money and charging interest rates, it ensures responsible allocaiton of recources. if theres no increased rate there's less incentive to engage in more succesful enterprise.

Brilliant observation. A whole two sentences for proving the validity of the theory of money usage.

I hope it wasn't too much of a strain for a mono-neuron, knuckle-dragging primate such as yourself.


i odn't see anyhting wrong with people lending money and charging interest rates.

I don't see anything wrong with you require to give me back more money than any money I lend you, providing of course I have a monopoly on issuing money.

I don't see anything wrong with you require to give me back more food than any food I lend you, providing of course I have a monopoly on growing food.

I don't see anything wrong with you require to give me back a mansion than any rentable room I lend you, providing of course I have a monopoly on construction materials and labour resources.

I don't see anything wrong with you require to give me back a private health clinic than any highly paid physician I lend you, providing of course I have a monopoly on hospitals, medical supplies, medical personnel and academic authority to grant "qualifications".

gotcha...

Anything else I missed?

Need any of the above "lent" to you? Muhahahaha! :lol:


it ensures responsible allocaiton of recources

How? because, otherwise nobody would buy from you? If you allocate resources either "responsibly" or "irresponsibly" how would that affect in any way the quality of your products or services or deadliness of your products or services. Rear gas tank exploding cars, cigarettes, toxic pesticides, hand guns and casinos anyone? If you fool enough of the dumbed-down population to be addicted to irresponsible brand loyalty no matter how stupid, unnecessary and worthless the product you'll get your "demand" for your business.


if theres no increased rate there's less incentive to engage in more succesful enterprise

Spoken like a true loan shark. Went to any shakedowns lately with any of your victims *ahem valued clients*?

Why work when you can get your money to work for you? If only I should be so lucky to have pretty pieces of hieroglyphic paper "working" for me.

[ZX3]

Originally posted by [email protected] 02, 2007 06:02 pm
Yes, but responsible does not always mean successful. One could borrow money, do all the right things, take good care of one's finances, and yet the market could take an unfavourable turn unexpectedly, or they could simply be run out of business by a multinational and be at nothing. Alternatively, money mightn't be borrowed for entrepreneurial purposes; it could be that a family simply have too much things going on financially right now, and simply have to borrow to pay the bills. Then they might not be able to afford the repayments, not because they are being irresponsible with their money, but quite simply because they aren't on a high enough salary.
It certainly could be true that people borrow money because of unexpected financial situations. But the cause is due to using to many resources than individually a person can support. But this is a situation which can exist in socialism as well. The answer seems to be vague talking about allocation of resources based upon "need" allocated in vague ways (but with frequent assurances that people's "personal possessions" are not subject to this. So what is the socialist answer? That EVERYONE pay the piper, and not the person using excessive reources?)