Submitted 20 hours ago by PixelNomad@sopuli.xyz to [deleted]
Title.
Check out David Graeber’s book Debt - The First 5000 Years. He argues that waaay before money people lived in complex credit economies, and that money only happened when there was war, so that you could pay soldiers.
Also barter economies only happen when people who have been used to money don’t have access to money anymore. Didn’t happen before money, or at least there’s no evidence of it.
Remember when toilet paper disappeared from store shelves because a respiratory virus was making its way to everyone? Eventually people realized they had toilet paper, the factories kept producing it, and the shelves recovered and we all agreed that was stupid.
Now imagine nobody has a reason/reasonable way to make their own toilet paper, and whatever toilet paper is available is up for grabs.
Now imagine that with pretty much everything else.
every single thing is free?
Not possible. Maybe you would have barter when there is no money anymore. But if you take away even that then it is like living on a lonely island. I am not sure if it could be called society anymore.
Anarchy (good)
Depends on what stage its at. If you were to somehow manage the shit show of surviving through the beginning times and actually establish a system that works and one not ran by cult leaders then a free trade system could look really nice. The other problem with this would be the more people involved the more there may be people that disagree with this system since no matter what everyone has different opinions on what they want even if its a fully functional system. I also fear that ultimately, just as it is today, we would still be full of problems that most likely stem from world leaders that have to much power and fuck it all up for the rest of us.
Steve@communick.news 20 hours ago
Ever see Star Trek?
A lot like that.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
/thread
though, a requirement for this would be post-scarcity, for which it’s necessary that most daily and small luxury goods are available at little to no cost.
there are many pathways to this, but they require the economics and politics to be reoriented to focus on society’s needs, rather than those of a few; and that the incentive to act on society’s behalf is always more than to act against it.
RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
We already overproduce everything that is necessary for daily life, food, housing, energy, clothes.
The problem with waiting for post-scarcity is it ignores that it’s a few assholes hording essential things especially housing that force us to work and earn those assholes more money and power, as long as that continues, increased production doesn’t matter as they’ll use the extra production to buy even more stuff we need to survive!
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Star Trek wouldn’t really function well as a society.
They hand waive away a lot of the issues. Like who gets to go to the outpost to extract dilithiim vs who gets to go be an artist.
I don’t think anyone in the Horta episode would be there if there wasn’t something more than “we just like rocks”
chunes@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I think anyone who is doing mining by hand wants to be doing it. They easily have the technology to fully automate it.