The universal aspiration of money

I've often thought about what the world would be like without money. I find myself thinking about how the different kinds of people living in the world today seem to react the same way when they aspire to achieve wealth. They might not be the most admirable traits that money inspires in people but they are at least predictable traits. Some people are only civil in order to achieve their aspirations of wealth. Others are content with living peaceful lives and striving for a simple life for their families. Either way, whatever personality type a person has, they can all be unified by this desire for wealth as a way to keep them under control.

If money had never been invented and personalities of all kinds were allowed to run rampit, do you think that the world would be filled with chaos and murder or do you think that such qualities might stem directly from the kinds of attitudes that money inspires on the human psyche? This is a question that requires some digging into the science of human nature. How we naturally are as a species and the way that the monetary system has influenced and altered that nature. Would we all be savages or would we actually be more advanced as a species without money? I believe that this question relates back to the origins of religion as well since the monetary system and religion seem to have originated at the same time.

 

Money is a ration card that entitles the bearer to obtain a certain quantity of a specific resource.

Barter is simply the exchanging of resources.

If we hadn't invented generic barter (money) I think people would lust after specific resources just as much as they do money. I think greed is hardwired in our species, for our own evolutionary good.

 

If people were not trading in units of money then it would be units of certain commodities such as some sort of fuel, raw material, live stock or so on.
The rich would be hording all the commodities.

 

It all boils down to human nature. With or without money greed still exists.

 

I see it more a matter of self interest vs mutual interests: That tension exists with or without money, with or without trade goods and skills.

Greed is just a manifestation of wants far in excess of one's needs for a comfortable, secure life. Self interest is the mainspring of Capitalism, and greed and envy are the means by which the spring is wound, and by which wanton excess is satiated....if but temporarily.

 

Money had to be invented....barter is simply too clunky, and often doesn't allow for the savings of labor today that can be easily recovered down the road in the form of saved money.

 

Once man developed a sense of needs for the future and tried to meet those needs, some form of money or barter became necessary. Once we evolved to the point that some old man who no longer functioned well in the hunt, but made the best spear points in the tribe, some way had to be developed to allow him to "trade" a spear point for a share of the meat the hunter got with it and be certain that in fact he got it. In the same way when the hunter traded meat to someone who had gathered roots etc, in order to make a stew, or traded meat and a hide for someone who tanned it. Then of course the chief and the shaman wanted their share and wanted a way to store what was owed them for future needs. It started as barter, but once it expanded beyond the tribe and those you knew, some form of money had to be developed, might be marks on a clay tablet, or knots on a string, but a way of keeping track was developed. Then human nature seems to be very conservative and we wanted enough food in the winter to survive in comfort and tried to make sure we were owed enough points, money or barter etc, to have not only the food we stored but a claim on others food etc. From then on greed, craving resources, class structures, etc, all seem to be almost inevitable. Only those tribes living totally in the today, surviving off the sea, or wandering through the desert, seem to fail to develop some form of money.

 

Even in a modern context, in a modern society, hunter gatherers often treat money like it's something that you get by shaking a tree and seeing what drops...if the man who usually has money doesn't have money that day, they will go to a different human money tree, or come back to the same human money tree another day and shake it to see what drops.

 

I don't want to be 'rich' in terms of having lots of money, I want to be 'rich' by making this place as self-sufficient as possible. Right now, if I could sell snow, I would be rich currency-wise...

 

I believe that yellow snow could be refined into an essential ingredient for gunpowder and fertilizer

 

Money is very simple for me, I need enough to pay my property tax and can take it or leave it after that. After the property taxes the only thing it is good for is trading the dead presidents for things of real value, that I really don't need but want for one reason or another.

 

We've got colonial bats on our property, their guano can be used for a key ingredients for explosives? Talk about the SHTF...

 

So otherwise you might have completely abandoned the need for money long ago, correct? This topic is about comparing the prospect of making money to human nature but I'd like to veer left here. I cannot bring myself to accept money as a natural force. Like it is the only way that people can be civilized and live harmoniously with one another, it's not. That's just how our society has been structured and has been growing from that foundation ever since. Even though many societies have started from the same base and have fallen hard, it still seems to be the agenda to make it seem like the most crucial element for a society.

You could probably care less about money otherwise, but you are still forced to use it under threat of having your land and everything you've worked so hard for taken away. I recognise that as extortion. It makes it so that you have to make some kind of offering to your rulers. Because the reality is that they claim ownership of your property and if you don't make your offering, they will take it. This is something that goes against human nature. It should not be looked at as just how the world works because it is the imposition of will of other people upon you. It's so evil and manipulative but it's just accepted in society because that is the foundation this country was built on. A society of brainwashed slaves.

The reality is, your property is your leash that keeps you playing by their rules.

 

Indeed it is a leash but there really is no way around it, only ways to minimize it.

 

'Twas a tic suggestion....but bat caves may become an attractive resource in a PAW BP world.

 

An option might be a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS). Such schemes work best in relatively small defined communities.

Local exchange trading system - Wikipedia

The explanatory Wiki isn't perhaps the best exposition of the system, but there are some useful references and links for further research.

Here is a FAQ sheet which may make the concept clearer.

An FAQ on the LETS system

 

That is true, but it isn't reliant on central banks, and doesn't require inconvenient transactions of swapping a dozen chickens and a gross of eggs, for a steer's haunch and a lamb's tongue. It is probably a 20th century equivalent of the old promissory note concept, just expressed as some kind of local currency like Trumpetors, or SussPences.