[cs137]

Part of the problem is that the way we conceptualize money leads us to treat it as if it's a real thing, as opposed to an accounting system the state creates for various purposes, some of which are desirable and some of which are not.

If it can be done, it can be afforded. Only if it is physically impossible can it not be "afforded". That is where we ought to start as a society. Where will we get the money for a universal basic income? There are an infinitude of options--the state literally made the stuff up. The question isn't why there is so little money for so many important things, and so much money wasted--the question is why, despite being ostensibly democratic, we are so bad at statecraft (and have been since the Boomers took charge).

[AnimalMuppet]

Problem is, not everything that can be done can be afforded (at least, not all at once).

Or, to put it in Thomas Sowell's terms, economics is about the allocation of limited resources that have alternate uses.

You want the government to print a bunch of money? Great. Now we have a bunch of money. We don't have any more actual stuff to buy with the money, though. Are we any better off? No. Is science any better off? Maybe - depends on what we do with the new money. Are the poor and disadvantaged any better off? Maybe - it depends on how much money is created, and how that money is distributed.

Sounds like what you really want is to smooth out who has access to how much stuff, and also support science better. Printing a bunch of money (and distributing it) might do it, but it depends a great deal on the details.

[cs137]

What you're saying isn't wrong, but there are obvious solutions in front of us. We implement a universal basic income (indexed to inflation, so it absorbs any inflation it causes) to keep the minimal living standard high, we increase basic research funding by an order of magnitude or more, and we tax the hell out of the rich. The only reason this isn't happening is because so much of the putative "leadership", in every organ of society, is corrupted by the hyperconsumptive billionaire vampires that these institutions are supposed to regulate (or, better yet, prevent from existing in the first place).

We face, in 2022, a number of problems that are actually pretty easy to solve, but the people in charge won't let us. Well, history tells us exactly what to do when we face that particular problem...

[xialvjun]

Because the Soviet Union collapsed.

[cs137]

Right. We didn't actually "win" the Cold War. As soon as "communism" (though it was never actually achieved) was perceived as defeated, the capitalists no longer had to justify themselves, which gave them license to tear town the regulations that restrained their worst impulses.

This led to the dismantling of the "middle class", which is and always has been a state creation. Once the capitalists saw the end of an existential threat--the idea that socialism might work [1] due to its ostensible prominence elsewhere in the world--they realized they no longer needed one. So what is now the former middle class was left to twist in the wind.

The US contributed to the destruction of the Soviet Union by forcing it to spend the bulk of its resources on its military. Granted, the Soviet system was suboptimal in a number of ways, but the constant threat of imperialist/capitalist aggression didn't help... war benefits capitalists and arms dealers, but is historically bad for the common people. It didn't help that a number of important figures within the USSR's final years (e.g., Yeltsin) were corrupt (ideologically and personally) and sought to undermine the system from within for their own financial and political gain.

Capitalism's "winning" of the Cold War was one of the biggest humanitarian disasters of our time. It enabled the end of "nice guy" capitalism and the dismantling of the US middle class, but it also created widespread poverty while it stripped hope from the people of the former Soviet Union. (The reason Russia has done so much evil shit over the past 15 years is that hopelessness creates a market for hubristic imperialism of the kind Putin is selling.) It enabled an attempt to reconfigure the global economy into a for-profit police state that has cost millions of lives in the Middle East. The bipolar war-economy world was a pretty awful place, but the unipolar capitalist world is even worse, and the only thing that has kept us from seeing it is inertia--people who still believe in capitalism have already parted ways from the cliff, but haven't looked down yet.

----

[1] Although, of course, the failure of the Soviet Union didn't actually prove that socialism can't work. It existed in a state of siege socialism from which it was never able to extricate itself. Given the harsh conditions from which it emerged, as well as the fervency of the far-right (capitalists, fascists) in their will to kill it, the accomplishments of the USSR are considerable. However, it wasn't a great place to live. It remained mostly poor (because of said initial conditions as well as necessary but massive war expenditures) and was authoritarian to a fault; its great sin was that it was a system of economic totalitarianism--the economy literally controlled everything, from where people could live to what they could say--but, then again, so is ours.

[peyton]

Money is not an accounting system created by the state for various purposes. It’s a solution to certain frictions in a barter economy. It is very real.

> If it can be done, it can be afforded. Only if it is physically impossible can it not be "afforded". That is where we ought to start as a society.

Isn’t this just Marxism? Non-commodity money and all that. I’m not really familiar with his work.

[NoGravitas]

> Money is not an accounting system created by the state for various purposes. It’s a solution to certain frictions in a barter economy.

That's a story that's often told, but it doesn't seem to actually be true. An examination of the historical and anthropological record shows that barter systems only exist in societies that formerly had money, but no longer do (for example, because the empire that was backing the currency collapsed). In societies that never had money, you see a variety of things, mostly formal gift economies, but sometimes things like tracking and cancellation of debts not denominated in a single unit.

If you'd like to learn more about this, read "Debt, the first 5,000 years", by the late anthropologist David Graeber.