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[sluissa]

To be fair, currency is an imperfect means to provide what you describe. We could potentially work on the barter system for pretty much everything, currency just makes it all (arguably) easier to keep track of and provides an easy way to give goods quantifiable value.

We could potentially trade a dozen jars of preserves to the power company for our electricity. But the power company doesn't necessarily need a dozen jars of preserves, nor does it necessarily want to deal with trying to find someone to trade them for the things it does need.

We could deal with currency better than we do. As has been proven in the last few years, much of the economy is held together simply by promises and trust. If that trust is broken, big problems occur. I think things could be changed so that currency is a more stable and reliable way to facilitate trade, perhaps coming up with a single, stable world currency, or separating the risky parts of the economy from the part that people use for their day to day business. But don't ask me if those would work, or how to implement them. I'm just throwing darts at a board here.

The alternative. Come up with something better.

[MrWiggles]

Any economic system is imperfect.

[Bauglir]

Except one based on leaves. I see no flaws in such a system.

[Blargityblarg]

Except one based on leaves. I see no flaws in such a system.

Banks having branches would make much more sense.

[Jackrabbit]

LordBucket, the entire time I've been reading your posts I can't help but think that if you replaced loaded words like slavery and manipulation with the words 'worker' and 'getting services in return for payment' the whole thing would seem perfectly acceptable. Beyond that, sure, I'd be all for a utopian society where matter replicators render work meaningless. Don't forget to give me a ring when that happens.

[Luke_Prowler]

Wasn't this topic about a protest?

[alway]

Looks like some NYC unions may be joining in*; we may see a newsworthy protest yet!

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/nyc-transit-union-joins-o_n_987156.html

[Girlinhat]

2 points.
1: People need to work meaningless jobs.  It ultimately results in a smaller economy.  If you take 100 factory workers, and replace 80 of them with robots, then you can build 5 factories of 20 each, plus robots.  For the same human number, you can burn through more resources and produce more goods.  Then everyone has a mustang that's worth 1/5 the cost it used to be, and no one cares about your pony.  It also means that you're going to run through a lot of steel, aluminum, gas, etc 5x faster.  You think the world is bad now?  Imagine if we're producing five times as much junk and consuming five times as much natural resources.  Unbridled productivity will lead to very fast resource depletion, and we're not at a point where we could survive that.  Things dry up and people start dying.
2: The natural state of a human creature is to do something.  We are not dwarves, ecstatic to party and sit in our rooms.  Given free time, a person will develop a hobby, be it productive or less so.  I'm currently unemployed, and it's driving me insane with free time.  I walk and tend a garden and make jewelry to pass the time.  If offered a job making and delivering jewelry to flower shops, that would be doing my normal routine, just with money.  That's putting a worker to use, and that's good for the economy.  Some people do crosswords, make them accountants.  Others have large multi-acre gardens (a man in my neighborhood harvests buckets of tomatoes annually), make them ditch diggers and back hoe workers.  Manual labor, creative effort, and problem solving skills will manifest naturally in a human being, and harnessing those abilities is just utilizing free floating resources.

Now, about the protests: Never trust a self-publicized resource, they always emphasize what they want.  If there's no third party coverage, then that means it's too small for the third parties to care.  That said, if people start caring, then I'd like to see what happens, but right now it looks like an over-inflated hype.

[Little]

The middle class has always been confused on this point. Ironically, the lower classes often understand it better. If they truly wish to end wealth disparity, if they truly wish to put an end to the power of the upper class...they need to stop perceiving voluntary servitude as a desirable end result.

In my 15 years of scouring the web, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen this wisdom shared. Kudos to you.

Starting a business to avoid slavery, or to put it another way: offering enslavement to others, is entirely missing the point.

I love you. You are the only person I have ever witnessed adhering to this line of thinking other than myself.

Hang out with more anarchists.

[SalmonGod]

Hang out with more anarchists.

Yo

I have to give some credit to LordBucket.  He received a lot less shit than I do when I try to promote similar ideas. 

It looks like we have very similar beliefs.  I've gone on the exact same rant as you many times.  If the world made sense, jobs going obsolete would not equal people going obsolete.  I've actually been hushed by co-workers for describing how stupidly pointless my job is -- how it does absolutely nothing of value for anyone and even if it did, it would take very very little effort to reduce the amount of labor required to a tiny fraction of what's currently invested.  They really didn't like me talking about that stuff.

But typically my rants put more emphasis on the social/psychological mechanisms that make absolutely any society based on the concept of property (which requires a LOT of clarification because the vast majority of people have an incredibly hard time understanding what I mean by that) always ends in a world where a handful of corrupt individuals control everything and are free to treat the rest of humanity like a bag of popcorn.  It's 100% inevitable.  Anything that does not address this fundamental principle is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound through the brain and always will be.

But I've already been through that on this forum.  It was kind of how I first started getting to know everyone... and I don't like to discuss it in-depth anymore.  In fact, I'm pretty much dead set on never discussing it among large groups ever again, because there is just too much deeply ingrained preconception and hysterical blue-pill psychological defense mechanisms (very condescending stuff, usually...) that needs to be dealt with to make it feasible.  I've been doing this for roughly 12 or 13 years, and at this point I just make isolated comments and actually discuss only when invited.

Anyway....

I did actually come here for a reason.  I just noticed this thread 30 minutes ago, and didn't expect to run across that debate..

Just wanted to post a song in support of the protest...

[DJ]

2: The natural state of a human creature is to do something.  We are not dwarves, ecstatic to party and sit in our rooms.  Given free time, a person will develop a hobby, be it productive or less so.

A non-negligible part of humanity is just plain lazy, they'd be perfectly content to spend their whole lives on couches.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah but they're not doing nothing. They're either creating something or consuming something.

[Levi]

2: The natural state of a human creature is to do something.  We are not dwarves, ecstatic to party and sit in our rooms.  Given free time, a person will develop a hobby, be it productive or less so.

A non-negligible part of humanity is just plain lazy, they'd be perfectly content to spend their whole lives on couches.

IE:  Me.  I only work so I can save enough cash to retire early.    Then I shall live a decadent life of playing videogames and hugging puppies.

[SalmonGod]

I think a lot of people become lazy as a response to an environment that turns work into a shallowly justified, forced obligation, instead of the result of one's own decisions to pursue things that matter to them.

[LordBucket]

A non-negligible part of humanity is just plain lazy, they'd be perfectly content to spend their whole lives on couches.

But why is that a problem? Why is occupying people with pointless busy work preferable to people sitting on a couch because that's what they'd rather do doing? Is it because you believe in the so-called Protestant work ethic? That "hard work" is a sign of virtue? Can you engage in some speculation and imagine where that way of thinking can lead?

there is just too much deeply ingrained preconception and hysterical blue-pill psychological defense mechanisms

Like I said a few pages back, the middle class tends to derive a great deal of self worth out of this notion of work. When one proposes to reimagine society in such a way that work is not an end unto itself, it's like you're attacking their personal sense of worth.

I've actually been hushed by co-workers for describing how stupidly pointless my job is

Of course. They live in fear that the treadmill might go away. So they busy themselves by running on it and deluding themselves into believing that there's some kind of virtue in running circles.

LordBucket, the entire time I've been reading your posts I can't help but think that if you replaced loaded words like slavery and manipulation with the words 'worker' and 'getting services in return for payment' the whole thing would seem perfectly acceptable.

Imagine a slave on a plantation. He works very hard in the fields and his master feeds and clothes him. He is dependant on the master for his survival and he is aware that if he didn't do good work his master wouldn't need him anymore. If you told him he could live in a society without slavery, he might call you crazy and ask you how he would eat in such a society with no master to give him food.

Now let's replace our "loaded" words with yours:

Imagine a worker at a company. He works very hard in his cubicle and his boss gives him money with which to buy food and clothing. He is dependant on his job for money to survive and he is very aware that if he didn't do good work his boss wouldn't need him anymore. If you told him he could live in a society without work, he might call you crazy and ask how he would get money to buy food with no job to give him money.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

In an environment of scarcity, if a man with an abundance of one thing, such as time, chooses to give some of what he has in abundance to another in exchange for something that they have in abundance, I find little fault in this. But I also perceive the dangers inherent in designing a society based on this premise.

I think a lot of people become lazy as a response to an environment
that turns work into a shallowly justified, forced obligation

Could be. But what's wrong with laziness? If my survivals needs are met and I decide to sit on a couch and contemplate my navel, why is that any less desirable a choice than busying myself with productivity? If I want cookies, it makes sense to go make cookies. If I don't want cookies, making cookies to "busy myself" seems silly.

When one attributes value to the act of "work" that can lead to all kinds of silliness on the societal level. Look at what some people in this thread have said:

People need to work meaningless jobs.

The natural state of a human creature is to do something.
I'm currently unemployed, and it's driving me insane with free time.

Are you truly so incapable of coming up with something of your own choosing to do that you need to live in a social environment that requires you to fill up your time with meaningless work to keep from going crazy? That seems unhealthy to me.

If you want something to do, ask yourself what you'd like to be doing, then go do it. We don't benefit from designing a society to require that vast quantities of useless work be done simply for the sake of giving us something to do.