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XxAxX said:

i hereby volunteer to relieve you guys of that nasty, burdensome stuff. ORGnote your money to me today!!!!

XxAxX said:

Genesia said:

Well played.

Although, in general, I find that it's people who don't have any, who think money is evil. They aren't willing to do what it takes to get it (ie, work), so they think nobody else should have it, either.

i just print more in my basement

U don't want uninvited guest knocking on your door 4 such comments.

Graycap23 said:

XxAxX said:

i just print more in my basement

U don't want uninvited guest knocking on your door 4 such comments.

Like the Feds?

In all honesty, I didn't address the question directly.

What is the point of money???

IMO - it's CONVENIENCE.

Toejam gave an excellent detail of this. Your output/production to society is rewarded in the form of money. A "credit" if you will, of your manpower. After an hour sitting at my desk rendering floorplans, I am "rewarded" with a certain amount of money. This money is less than an hour of output by a doctor, but more than an hour of output by a cashier at McDonald's.

The convenience of getting a piece of paper printed by the government is that I don't have to walk into the bakery and try to barter my floorplans for a bunch of bread. I give them a portion of my reward...a bit of my money.

No, electricity is not generated by pieces of paper. But think of all the engineers and construction workers and contractors involved in designing, builfing and operating a power station. You really want to coordinate the compensation of said services via livestock and barley?

Of course, as in Communism, the people could theoretically just work for the "common good"and receive the necessities of life in return (food, shelter, fuel, healthcare)...but as we saw these past century, humans are unwilling to give up "shiny things" and have to pretty much be forced at gunpoint to give up their "things". There is no room for frivolous things like iPods or Air Jordans in true communism.

The absolute BEAUTY of these here United States of America (assuming you're in the USA) is that you do have freedom to live your life the way that you want.

There is nothing...NOTHING stopping you from quitting your job and commencing a life hunting/fishing/farming without the need of greenbacks. Plenty of people do it today.

If that is too primitive for your tastes...then rejoice in the fact that travel restrictions to Cuba are being eased and you will soon be free to live in a civilized nation that does not place an emphasis on MONEY or "things".Plenty of people are living very healthy, happy lives in Cuba who don't care for "things". The ones fleeing to Miami want "things".

However, if you enjoy the conveniences of a Western (and capitalist) society too much to abandon them, then you have to respect the fact that a bartering or capital-free society does NOT produce them.

Genesia said:

XxAxX said:

i hereby volunteer to relieve you guys of that nasty, burdensome stuff. ORGnote your money to me today!!!!

Well played.

Although, in general, I find that it's people who don't have any, who think money is evil. They aren't willing to do what it takes to get it (ie, work), so they think nobody else should have it, either.

i had it, and now i don't

so like i said earlier, in todays

society it's somethin to divide

those who have it and those who don't.

most of the people that have it today

didn't do that much to get it.

i sold dope and took it from others

for years and lived with your stars

paid lawyers and put my money

into the economy buyin unessisary shit.

people are born into it, sing for it,

play for it, win it for a dollar...

the filthy rich, mostly stole it from

the ones who WORKED FOR IT as you say

the only really victimized people are

the HONEST WORKIN PEOPLE of the world,

cause they get fucked for doin the right thing...

KingBAD said:

Genesia said:

Well played.

Although, in general, I find that it's people who don't have any, who think money is evil. They aren't willing to do what it takes to get it (ie, work), so they think nobody else should have it, either.

i had it, and now i don't

so like i said earlier, in todays

society it's somethin to divide

those who have it and those who don't.

most of the people that have it today

didn't do that much to get it.

i sold dope and took it from others

for years and lived with your stars

paid lawyers and put my money

into the economy buyin unessisary shit.

people are born into it, sing for it,

play for it, win it for a dollar...

the filthy rich, mostly stole it from

the ones who WORKED FOR IT as you say

the only really victimized people are

the HONEST WORKIN PEOPLE of the world,

cause they get fucked for doin the right thing...

King - from the time that humans abandoned tribal life and settled into villages/towns/cities/kingdoms/nations...there have been the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS.

Even when people lived bartering their goods & wares without the use of money, there were those in charge and those in the bottom.

Money just makes everything more convenient.

Take away the money, you'll still have division. No one is truly "equal" in society unless everyone does the same thing. Travel to the depths of the Amazon or Papau New Guinea and you will find something akin to true "equality", in those societies where everyone lives the same, works the same, and does the same. Even then, you'll typically have a chief or a shaman who gets paid tribute because he is more "important".

I do agree that we are living in a time of excess. If you've followed any of the "Occupy" threads we've had here, you'll see that I've argued that the excesses of our current state of affairs is killing this country. The "haves" have amassed so much wealth & power that it's like we're no longer the egalitarian society of old...we're losing the middle class that made us what we are and turning into another heirachal something-ocracy...all we need is for someone to get the country into a frenzy and convince the sheeples that we need an "emperor" and it'll be Napoleon Part Deux.

But money isn't the root of this. It's just making it easier to perpetrate.

I use my money to buy stuff.

I would love to be less specialized, more well-rounded, and to grow my food, and to build my house.

But I don't know if I want to make my hammer from cut wood (I'd have to make the axe first) and forged iron, to fertilize my own seeds gathered from flowers, to gather wild berries, to hunt wild animals to build my own roads and car, sleep on hay, etc...

Everything we do is a product of the specialization that has been enabled by money, and allowed humans to move into the life we live, for better or worse.

yanowha said:

Truly. It seems to me the time, energy, and natural resources we spend and/or waste everyday to accumulate money could be put to far better, more productive, meaningful use. Am I the only one who's ever had this thought?

Bob Dylan said, "What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

Totally agree. Unfortunately, money is usually required for that last part.

But, the amount of money you need to accumulate for that last part greatly lessens if you learn to see through what Daniel Gilbert calls "the belief-transmission game".

Don't surround yourself with people who are worried about keeping up with the Joneses and you'll find that you can be eminently happy (some believers in Zen philosophy might even say more happy) with less. Personally, I've stripped my possessions down, simplified my life and I'm happier than ever!

Money is power, that's it. Plain and simple. People can sugarcoat it or make it seem like money is just a means to an end, which it sort of is for normalfolk, but it's power in the hands of the wrong people.

toejam said:

What's the point of money?

Let me give you an example:

Let's say I have a goal: I want to live in a place that improves my happiness, health and well-being. I've concluded that the best way to do this is to build a house. In order to reach my goal, I need the help of others. E.g. I need wood and bricks from someone who is in possession of them, and I need people to help me build the house too.

Now, it's unlikely these people (herein referred to as the 'builders') will have any incentive to help me unless I can offer them something in return. The builders love chocolate and request chocolate as the "payment" for building the house. But I do not have any, and don't particularly care for it. So what am I to do?

And this is where money steps in.

Although I might not have any chocolate to offer the builders, my friend who makes chocolate does owe me a favor - Let's say I'm a music teacher and have been giving him a few guitar lessons, and these lessons have been taking up time that I could have been using to build my house.

So I say to the workers: "Hey, I don't have any chocolate to offer you, but my chocolate-making friend does owe me a favor for all the guitar lessons I've been giving him. Take this token to him as a sign that if he can give you some chocolate, he no longer has to owe me my favor".

That token is essentially what money is. It's a symbol of trust. A recognised symbol of the exchange of favors from one party to the next. It only works when the people within the society "trust" that others will maintain it's "value". (All three parties have to follow the agreement of course, otherwise the system falls. Recessions and whatnot happen when people lose that "trust" that they will be able to get the "value" (favors) they expected from their tokens)

And what's the most likely outcome of this basic scenario? Well I get my house, the chocolate-maker no longer owes me a favor, and the builders get the chocolate they wanted. It's a Win-Win-Win situation, provided everyone follows the agreement. If one party chooses not follow the rules, then it becomes a Win-Loss-Loss situation. But it's highly unlikely those who lost out will "deal" with the cheaters again. So really, it's at the cheater's expense in the long run.

But anyway...

Money has helped society in so many ways for the simple reason that it allows more people to achieve their goals than otherwise without it. To suggest that we don't need money is naive, ignorant, and somewhat un-thought-through IMO. If you'd prefer to live in the caveman days where power was based solely on individual physical strength, then so be it. I'd rather live in a world where people participate in the act of helping each other for mutual benefit, which is essentially what money allows us to do on a grander scale than just our close friends and family.

Now having said that, I'm not suggesting that our current economic systems are perfect, nor that all the current "rich" and "poor" deserve the situation they find themselves in. But it's a fallacy also to think we could ever come up with a "perfect" system. We can only try our best with what we know at any given time, and always strive to improve. It's the how we accomplish this improvement that is the difficult question.

.

[Edited 2/24/12 4:05am]

Perfectly stated. Yay from me.

Not only does money allow us to be more efficient in our transactions, but it allows us to specialize, so that we can be the best welder or accountant or refrigeration mechanic we can be. We don’t have to spend our time thinking about making televisions or printing books or making pencils. We can just focus on our specialty allowing us to increase our productivity, which allows you to charge more for your own time, and everybody else benefits since you’ll be more effective in your field, and of course you’ll reap the same rewards of everyone else’s specialization. And money also makes it much more efficient to assign values to products, which in turn makes resource allocation much more effective. The information from prices sends signals that tell us how many welders and accountants and heads of lettuce we need to produce – it may not function perfectly, but it almost always works much better in practice than official dictat from government bureaucracy.

Ace said:

yanowha said:

Truly. It seems to me the time, energy, and natural resources we spend and/or waste everyday to accumulate money could be put to far better, more productive, meaningful use. Am I the only one who's ever had this thought?

Bob Dylan said, "What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

Totally agree. Unfortunately, money is usually required for that last part.

But, the amount of money you need to accumulate for that last part greatly lessens if you learn to see through what Daniel Gilbert calls "the belief-transmission game".

Don't surround yourself with people who are worried about keeping up with the Joneses and you'll find that you can be eminently happy (some believers in Zen philosophy might even say more happy) with less. Personally, I've stripped my possessions down, simplified my life and I'm happier than ever!

Absolutely. If the OP is arguing for anti-materialism, then I take no issue with that. I am a great believer in having a simplified life - I barely own anything. I could give a shit’s dick-ass about TVs or cars (never owned one of either of those things, in fact), and I certainly believe that any satisfaction those things bring is fleeting. Studies have indicated that spending your money on experiences will produce greater life satisfaction – IE a trip, a theatre experience, etc. – so if you’re going to spend your money on something, that’s probably the smarter way to use it. http://www.sciencedaily.c...150518.htm

Personally, money is incredibly important to me, but solely as a means to an end, not for anything I want to own. If we escape diseases and accidents, we’ll have 80 or so years, hopefully most of it with a functional brain, and I have no desire to spend most of that time in an office. I hoard my dollars so I can have quality time early in my life doing the things I truly enjoy.

[Edited 2/25/12 11:34am]

The point of money is to provide an abstract system that allows the ones with low ethical standards to portray themselves as being above the rest and get to mate with the best ch1x0rz.

I miss the days (centuries ago) when you could eat and sleep warm even with no money...

Perhaps, the OP wishes to have an barter system of government?

damosuzuki said:

Ace said:

Bob Dylan said, "What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

Totally agree. Unfortunately, money is usually required for that last part.

But, the amount of money you need to accumulate for that last part greatly lessens if you learn to see through what Daniel Gilbert calls "the belief-transmission game".

Don't surround yourself with people who are worried about keeping up with the Joneses and you'll find that you can be eminently happy (some believers in Zen philosophy might even say more happy) with less. Personally, I've stripped my possessions down, simplified my life and I'm happier than ever!

Absolutely. If the OP is arguing for anti-materialism, then I take no issue with that. I am a great believer in having a simplified life - I barely own anything. I could give a shit’s dick-ass about TVs or cars (never owned one of either of those things, in fact), and I certainly believe that any satisfaction those things bring is fleeting. Studies have indicated that spending your money on experiences will produce greater life satisfaction – IE a trip, a theatre experience, etc. – so if you’re going to spend your money on something, that’s probably the smarter way to use it. http://www.sciencedaily.c...150518.htm

Personally, money is incredibly important to me, but solely as a means to an end, not for anything I want to own. If we escape diseases and accidents, we’ll have 80 or so years, hopefully most of it with a functional brain, and I have no desire to spend most of that time in an office. I hoard my dollars so I can have quality time early in my life doing the things I truly enjoy.

Ace said:

damosuzuki said:

Absolutely. If the OP is arguing for anti-materialism, then I take no issue with that. I am a great believer in having a simplified life - I barely own anything. I could give a shit’s dick-ass about TVs or cars (never owned one of either of those things, in fact), and I certainly believe that any satisfaction those things bring is fleeting. Studies have indicated that spending your money on experiences will produce greater life satisfaction – IE a trip, a theatre experience, etc. – so if you’re going to spend your money on something, that’s probably the smarter way to use it. http://www.sciencedaily.c...150518.htm

Personally, money is incredibly important to me, but solely as a means to an end, not for anything I want to own. If we escape diseases and accidents, we’ll have 80 or so years, hopefully most of it with a functional brain, and I have no desire to spend most of that time in an office. I hoard my dollars so I can have quality time early in my life doing the things I truly enjoy.

at this time in life i have a minimum of life's luxuries

and i am so glad that it's like that for me.

had i thought i was gonna live past 21 i would have

squerlled money away for my old age, and i would be

just as caught up on that shit now as i was then.

i have not in my 56 years been happier with my life.