Comment on Why is currency so essential?
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Makes it easier to buy food and pay for rent.
My landlord doesn’t want to barter for goods and services on a monthly basis.
Comment on Why is currency so essential?
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Makes it easier to buy food and pay for rent.
My landlord doesn’t want to barter for goods and services on a monthly basis.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I being obtuse, for sure, but why does your land lord need you to provide him goods and services?
FaceDeer@fedia.io 7 months ago
You answered your question in the sentence right after your question. The landlord owns the property and so he can do what he wants with it. He's letting you live there but has decided he wants something in exchange for letting you live there. If currency didn't exist he'd want something else in exchange.
Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Making the assumption ownership is a valued currency of course.
Which is arguably a bootstrap-paradox; we need capital to participate in capitalism, for which we need - cause without capitalism what would we do with our capital.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 7 months ago
Are you suggesting people shouldn't be allowed to own stuff? There are very few economic systems where people aren't allowed to own stuff and they tend not to be popular. Most of the people who are complaining about landlords and rent and whatnot really just want to own their own houses.
classic@fedia.io 7 months ago
Going back far enough, scarcity is the answer. We technically live in a post-scarcity world now. But we are bound by the models we developed when it existed.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I wouldn’t say we are completely post scarcity, but enough of the producers of goods create enough artificial scarcity in order to keep prices high and the train moving. Unfortunately, I don’t see the paradigm changing until we have a major altering event in which many people perish.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We’re only post-scarcity for certain things in certain geopolitical regions, and even then, logistics of distributing those things is a problem. Computers, for example, will always be scarce in their current form because the raw materials to build them are naturally scarce, can only be extracted so fast, and have a limited ability to be recycled. We have a shit-ton of them, but they’re still scarce.
classic@fedia.io 7 months ago
There is definitely human induced scarcity. I debated including that distinction.
Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
It’s nice to have something to eat.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Food, people make food in excess.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 7 months ago
They make that food for money.
Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
Do they? I’m pretty sure only about one in three humans works in food production. I think it is reasonable for them to expect the other two to give them something for their food in return.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Landlords exist to extract value.
blakemiller@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And we exist to extract value from agriculture. We’ve developed to a point where it’s both possible and desirable to live in close proximity to one another. It’s possible because ag is so successful and scalable, and it’s desirable because new opportunities are possible when everything is nearby. So that’s the trade off you made. To afford the city life, you accrue value through city opportunities and you trade it in exchange for the goods from service providers. The alternative is that you run your own farm. Ask yourself how many farmers you know! And you’ll see which decision most people make.
All to say, we shouldn’t think of value extraction as a uniformly bad practice. We all do it and we need to do it because each square acre of land doesn’t provide the same goods and services.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
To pay for more goods and services that extract value.