What a crock of garbage. 6.5 minutes of hand having and pie-in-the-sky dreaming, without a scrap of evidence that anything being said has any basis in reality. This is clearly divorced from basic economic principles.
To pick one of many lines that show this guy is utterly clueless, "Technology has completely freed us from hard labour."
Oh, really? The guys building the house across the street from me right now look like they're working pretty hard. Coal doesn't mine itself. I guess pixies and fairies will wish our roads, bridges, and buildings into existence.
And who exactly is going to build these magic machines that poop out the things we all need to survive? Who exactly is going to ration the output to make things "fair."
Money exists for a reason, that reason is human nature, and no amount of commie propaganda is going to change that.
Money exists for a reason, that reason is
human nature, and no amount of commie propaganda
is going to change that.
I agree that this idea has some holes, but to throw it out as "commie propaganda" is a little much. It seems anything that isn't capitalism is immediately communism. I believe resource-based economics are completely different, perhaps completely opposite from communism.
Someone clearly skipped their economics 101 lesson.
Money is a means of exchange, with supply and demand, it regulates our resource use. Why is it needed? Because without prices, sane economic decisions are impossible. With so many choices on what to produce and what to produce it with, and with scarcity in mind, we have to have a way to put resources to efficient use, instead of just guessing. Having prices that come from supply and demand has been historically proven to be the best way of putting resources to efficient use.
Not only does the video fail to acknowledge the importance of a price system, but it comes bundled with a couple of flawed premises, one of them being the Marxist theory of technological improvement leading to unemployment in a capitalist society.
To anyone who thinks that 'Yes! I hate bills! I feel so unfree!', I can sympathize. However, don't assume that the alternative that is proposed is any better.
"only limited by the raw materials needed, not cost"
Why on earth would someone work in a mine to get the raw materials needed if there were no compensation? This whole bizarre thing discounts that human output is a resource, one which you can't use for free.
Free only works if everyone participates equally. If just one person is lazy, the system crumbles from resentment.
Money does not create inequality, it simply is the scorecard to show the inequality of those people involved in the system. In a system not corrupted by greed and theft, those with money are simply people that work harder, and/or smarter than those who have less money.
Your final statement only holds if (a) all environments in which people live are equally rich in opportunity/resources or (b) there are sufficient environments with adequate opportunity/resources to which people can move cheaply. That is not the world we currently occupy.
This is very dangerous video and execution of those ideas could lead to suffering.
This is not about the money but about communist-style of equality. If the ultimate goal of removing money should lead to removing inequality, you may take it to the extreem and every man should get:
the same free basked of food (as pictured), the same free cloths, the same free computer, the same free education, the same free land, the same free house, the same free woman, the same amount of free love, he must also get the same free DNA, be born at the same place exactly at the same point in time... to be really equal.
If you are not able to satisfy those conditions, there will be always inequality between people, with or without money, no mater how you will denominate the perceived values.
I personally believe in competition and diversification which is how nature always worked in the history and that is why we have better life today. Existence of money has a little to do with it.
This is kind of a strawman. Perhaps the equality talked about is not the boring clone of existence kind, but the kind where people get equal choice to do with themselves as they wish?
There is no denying that currently there are a large number of people in the world with extremely limited choice in what they do, and that choice is in many cases not actually a choice (work hard doing X or work hard doing Y but never get to do anything but hard work with little reward).
Secondly, I would like to point out that your personal belief statement is also based on a fallacy. The just because something always worked in the past and it got us here does not mean 1) it will get us to the future, 2) it was just or moral, 3) here is better for everyone.
from the video: "The only thing money creates is inequality. A scoring system for humanity that decides who gets what."
And without money, who decides who get what instead? Wesley Mouch?
I may be biased by just recently having read Atlas Shrugged, and not quite having digested it completely yet, but I do feel that money is the best tool we have to solve the huge problem of optimally distributing resources. The only true resources are every persons time, ability and effort; everything else is given to us for free by the universe and governed by the laws of physics/nature. Freedom means we each get to decide what it means to apply our own resources optimally.
Now if we can use technology to create a better communication/collaboration tool than money to pool and distribute our resources I'm all for it.
I live in a tiny country, Poland (that's eastern Europe).
We've seen these ideas before, right before 89', Berlin Wall, right before getting out independence back from Soviet Union.
But it seems I can go West and hear it again, cool.
[+] [-] jdludlow|14 years ago|reply
To pick one of many lines that show this guy is utterly clueless, "Technology has completely freed us from hard labour."
Oh, really? The guys building the house across the street from me right now look like they're working pretty hard. Coal doesn't mine itself. I guess pixies and fairies will wish our roads, bridges, and buildings into existence.
And who exactly is going to build these magic machines that poop out the things we all need to survive? Who exactly is going to ration the output to make things "fair."
Money exists for a reason, that reason is human nature, and no amount of commie propaganda is going to change that.
[+] [-] tomlin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arvinjoar|14 years ago|reply
Not only does the video fail to acknowledge the importance of a price system, but it comes bundled with a couple of flawed premises, one of them being the Marxist theory of technological improvement leading to unemployment in a capitalist society.
To anyone who thinks that 'Yes! I hate bills! I feel so unfree!', I can sympathize. However, don't assume that the alternative that is proposed is any better.
Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
[+] [-] jackvalentine|14 years ago|reply
Why on earth would someone work in a mine to get the raw materials needed if there were no compensation? This whole bizarre thing discounts that human output is a resource, one which you can't use for free.
[+] [-] leon_|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TGJ|14 years ago|reply
Money does not create inequality, it simply is the scorecard to show the inequality of those people involved in the system. In a system not corrupted by greed and theft, those with money are simply people that work harder, and/or smarter than those who have less money.
[+] [-] revolvingcur|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dr_win|14 years ago|reply
This is not about the money but about communist-style of equality. If the ultimate goal of removing money should lead to removing inequality, you may take it to the extreem and every man should get: the same free basked of food (as pictured), the same free cloths, the same free computer, the same free education, the same free land, the same free house, the same free woman, the same amount of free love, he must also get the same free DNA, be born at the same place exactly at the same point in time... to be really equal.
If you are not able to satisfy those conditions, there will be always inequality between people, with or without money, no mater how you will denominate the perceived values.
I personally believe in competition and diversification which is how nature always worked in the history and that is why we have better life today. Existence of money has a little to do with it.
[+] [-] sophacles|14 years ago|reply
There is no denying that currently there are a large number of people in the world with extremely limited choice in what they do, and that choice is in many cases not actually a choice (work hard doing X or work hard doing Y but never get to do anything but hard work with little reward).
Secondly, I would like to point out that your personal belief statement is also based on a fallacy. The just because something always worked in the past and it got us here does not mean 1) it will get us to the future, 2) it was just or moral, 3) here is better for everyone.
[+] [-] tehansen|14 years ago|reply
And without money, who decides who get what instead? Wesley Mouch?
I may be biased by just recently having read Atlas Shrugged, and not quite having digested it completely yet, but I do feel that money is the best tool we have to solve the huge problem of optimally distributing resources. The only true resources are every persons time, ability and effort; everything else is given to us for free by the universe and governed by the laws of physics/nature. Freedom means we each get to decide what it means to apply our own resources optimally.
Now if we can use technology to create a better communication/collaboration tool than money to pool and distribute our resources I'm all for it.
[+] [-] jakubmal|14 years ago|reply
I live in a tiny country, Poland (that's eastern Europe). We've seen these ideas before, right before 89', Berlin Wall, right before getting out independence back from Soviet Union.
But it seems I can go West and hear it again, cool.
[+] [-] nairboon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] negatendo|14 years ago|reply