[B0ycey]

This is all basic stuff.

Ignoring all the bollocks that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said, it is also basic stuff to know a medium isn't required for trade. It can be seen with "swappsies" on the playground if it helps.

[SolarCross]

Ignoring all the bollocks that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said, it is also basic stuff to know a medium isn't required for trade. It can be seen with "swappsies" on the playground if it helps.

That depends on what is being traded. Explain to me how I as a brit can pay for a PC made in Taiwan with barter? What am I supposed to do fly over to the factory and give everyone a back rub? Then how do I pay the airline, the hotel etc. etc.... more back rubs?

I have explained to you the basics of basic economics. Now, why do you not explain WHY we should go BACK to barter? Let's see if you can explain the reason for your weird demands.

[B0ycey]

That depends on what is being traded. Explain to me how I as a brit can pay for a PC made in Taiwan with barter? What am I supposed to do fly over to the factory and give everyone a back rub? Then how do I pay the airline, the hotel etc. etc.... more back rubs?

I have explained to you the basics of basic economics. Now, why do you not explain WHY we should go BACK to barter? Let's see if you explain the reason for your weird demands.

For a start I was replying about what is created and what was natural with another user. Not about the benefits/negatives of currency. As currency is a concept I cannot see how it is natural. But perhaps behaviour to ultimately invent it by using our advanced intelligence is. And I base that on animal behaviour and human behaviour.

Nonetheless that is irelevant to whether you need a medium to exchange - which is something you not I brought up. I am sure you could barter for a PC from Taiwan if you have something they want to exchange for it btw. And if you don't, may I suggest a duel?

[SolarCross]

For a start I was replying about what is created and what was natural with another user. Not about the benefits/negatives of currency. As currency is a concept I cannot see how it is natural. But perhaps behaviour to ultimately invent it by using our advanced intelligence is. And I base that on animal behaviour and human behaviour.

Nonetheless that is irelevant to whether you need a medium to exchange - which is something you not I brought up. I am sure you could barter for a PC from Taiwan if you have something they want to exchange for it btw. And if you don't, may I suggest a duel?

The question you are avoiding still is WHY would one barter when paying with money is better (solves coincidence of wants problem)?

[late]

For a start I was replying about what is created and what was natural with another user. Not about the benefits/negatives of currency. As currency is a concept I cannot see how it is natural. But perhaps behaviour to ultimately invent it by using our advanced intelligence is. And I base that on animal behaviour and human behaviour.

Nonetheless that is irelevant to whether you need a medium to exchange - which is something you not I brought up. I am sure you could barter for a PC from Taiwan if you have something they want to exchange for it btw. And if you don't, may I suggest a duel?

The USSR had a non-convertible currency, they had to barter for everything from Pepsi to computers. It was very inefficient.

The Modern World had it's beginning in Renaissance Italy when the problems of international trade were partly solved by developing sophisticated financial instruments.

Capitalism has always been about international trade, and the Modern era was made possible via capitalism.

Before capitalism we had mercantilism, which used hard currency.

You've devolved to before that, maybe a millennium before. Maybe more.

[B0ycey]

The question you are avoiding still is WHY would one barter when paying with money is better (solves coincidence of wants problem)?

I haven't ignored it. I just have never addressed it. I might as well ask you why should privilege, wealth and opportunity be determined by birth? It has nothing to to with the topic or anything you wrote but fuck it, I'll ask it anyway.

[B0ycey]

The USSR had a non-convertible currency, they had to barter for everything from Pepsi to computers. It was very inefficient.

The Modern World had it's beginning in Renaissance Italy when the problems of international trade were partly solved by developing sophisticated financial instruments.

Capitalism has always been about international trade, and the Modern era was made possible via capitalism.

Before capitalism we had mercantilism, which used hard currency.

You've devolved to before that, maybe a millennium before. Maybe more.

I was trying to avoid this simply because it detracts the message from my original point. But I respect you Late and think you are a worthy new PoFo user so I will at least address you. A medium is a great way to exchange and was why gold was ultimately used in coins. It is far more efficient than exchange value which is why recent civilisation became more advanced. But it isn't needed to trade. And the concept requires intelligence and a social contract to work anyway. You do not see it in nature but that is perhaps because animals do not have the mental process to understand it. Should Communism ever exist, mediums may well continue - to some extent anyway. I just don't see it being used to create debt or profit.

[SolarCross]

(B0ycey) devolved to before that, maybe a millennium before. Maybe more.

Much more than a millennium as it happens. The use of metals stamped with some kind of official approval is at least two and half thousand years old. But we know that gold in its raw form has been used as money since at least ancient sumeria, so about 5000 years. We know this because the ancient Sumerians preserved their tax records on clay tablets which have been found and translated. Sumeria is of course credited with being the first human civilisation. Money enables trade and trade enables civilisation. If we lost that pillar then we go back to hunter-gathering.

[late]

But it isn't needed to trade.

Don't know if you're American. Shortly before Shays Rebellion, the good Burghers of Boston sucked all the hard money out of Mass.

Receipts were used as a medium of exchange. It's awkward and inefficient, but you can scrape by.

But nobody is going to do something like that willingly.

Economies were outgrowing their hard money supply in the late 1800s. What saved us was the Gold Rush. But it was just a matter of time before we got serious about paper money.

Nowadays most money never takes physical form, it only exists on computers.

Don't see how you're going to replace it without economic collapse.

[B0ycey]

Don't see how you're going to replace it without economic collapse.

Whether currency is efficient or not was not my point. I have already explained it is and that even under Communism I suspect a medium will be used to exchange - just it will not be used for profit or debt.

Although this quote I find very interesting as currency may well be the reason for an economic collapse. It usually is. Unsustainable debt may well be the reason for Capitalisms future downfall. Only time will tell.

[SolarCross]

Whether currency is efficient or not was not my point. I have already explained it is and that even under Communism I suspect a medium will be used to exchange - just it will not be used for profit or debt.

Although this quote I find very interesting as currency may well be the reason for an economic collapse. It usually is. Unsustainable debt may well be the reason for Capitalisms future downfall. Only time will tell.

If someone dies from a slit throat B0ycey thinks the death was caused by the existence of blood. Consequently B0ycey sees that the cure for death from a slit throat must be to remove all the blood. The most efficient way to remove all the blood of course is to slit the throat.... This is the genius of communists.

[B0ycey]

This is the genius of communists.

I am not a Communist. Although are you aware the solution to a debt crisis (housing) was more debt? How much debt will it take before it is too much and cannot be paid back without serious austerity? And that will just expand the wealth gap further.

[SolarCross]

I am not a Communist. Although are you aware the solution to a debt crisis (housing) was more debt? How much debt will it take before it is too much and cannot be paid back without serious austerity? And that will just expand the wealth gap further.

You repeat their propaganda verbatim, that makes you a communist.

The current financial system is basically rife with fraud, and yes that is a problem. What follows will not be communism though. If the bank's fake money fails as a media of exchange then people will just start using something else. Older people tend to bet on that something being precious metals once again, younger more tech-savvy people tend to bet that something will be crypto-currency. It will probably be both because they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

[Wellsy]

https://files.warwick.ac.uk/simonclarke/files/pubs/mmm2.pdf

the ‘inconvenience’
of barter does not lie in the mediated character of the exchange relation, which requires the individual to enter two exchange relations instead of only one, for this is as much the case when money serves as the mediating term in the exchange as it is when any other commodity plays that role. The ‘inconvenience’ of barter lies in the fact that the first exchange is conditional on the outcome of the second, the results of which cannot be known with certainty. I may wish to exchange corn for meat, but the butcher may want not corn but cloth. The butcher may be willing to accept my corn in exchange for her meat, with a view to subsequently exchanging the corn for cloth with somebody else. In this event neither of us wants the corn in itself, but only as the means of exchange for something else: corn serves in this exchange not as a use-value, but as a value. However, in exchanging meat for corn the butcher runs the risk of not being able to make the subsequent exchange on the anticipated terms, and this is where the ‘inconvenience’ of barter lies.

The use of durable, infinitely divisible commodities, with a high value in relation to their volume, as means of exchange certainly removes some of the physical inconvenience attached to less suitable commodities, but it does not solve the fundamental problem of barter, that exchanges are made conditional on an uncertain outcome. If corn is not in general demand the butcher will be unwilling to accept corn in exchange for meat, but the introduction of money does not solve this problem, for if corn is not in general demand I will no more be able to exchange my corn for money than I was able to exchange it for meat. On the other hand, if I am able to sell my corn for money, the rationality of this exchange is not determined by the conditions of this exchange alone, but also by my uncertain expectation of the future price of meat. It is the uncertainty of the outcome of particular exchanges that disqualifies particular commodities from serving as the means of exchange, and gives rise to money as the universal equivalent. However money does not remove the uncertainty attached to particular exchanges, it merely expresses that uncertainty in a universal form. Money does not resolve the inconvenience of barter, it generalises it. Far from expressing the rationality of exchange, money expresses the irrationality of a system of social production in which provision for human need is achieved only through the alienated form of commodity exchange.

And I think to speak of capitalism as natural and unnatural often seems to one sided emphasize the role or lack of influence of human beings in the making and sustaining of capitalist relations which didn’t come from heaven above but isn’t the product of a single idea but relates to the larger force of the social whole.
That capitlism is something created such that even our sense of what is natural is artificially created by human labor. All sorts of food and fruit now exist in parts of the world they didn’t originate from because of global trade. Even the potato in its origins was toxic to humans until in the high mountains of south or central america, cant remember which, it was cultivated till it was edible. We do not stand independent of what is natural but are from it. But its not simply an empirical world we’re born into wither but one of given social relations and meaning which we become acculturated to. But capitalism is no more or less ‘natural’ than any economic and political organization. But those who would seek to only emphasize it as natural would often emphasize it as universal. Hence the tendency to speak of human nature as how man ideally acts as a rational (instrumental reason) actor within capitalist relations. Many a story hides such relations as it describes humans bartering as if capitalism is merely a continuation of trade in a more complex form rather than something in its own right.

Need to interogate the categories of social and natural which still considers man not in his biosocial integrity but still as biological countered to the social. The intuition of the unity doesn’t present itself the method for actually seeing as much. But if anything is close it is found in hegels dialectics which dowsnt make descartes mistake of treating the ontological distinction between mind and matter as posing the issue of the subject object relation and neither does he make kants mistake in treating the individual as isolated from the society one exists within. The individual whilst not identical with an abdtract average of societal norms is still born from it.

Capitalism can change but not simply as a point of changing minds. Disbelieving in money doesn’t stop its function as capitalist production isnt dependent on belief and in fact informs belief of the classes. Mayerial relations need to be change and that can be done but figuring out how is the difficulty to which marx offered the best outlines of the problem of capitalist production. Which wasnt a goal to simply rationally predict production but to do away with the law of value altogether. That human relationships would in fact be to meet human development and need and not subsumed to the global economy.

[B0ycey]

https://files.warwick.ac.uk/simonclarke/files/pubs/mmm2.pdf


And I think to speak of capitalism as natural and unnatural often seems to one sided emphasize the role or lack of influence of human beings in the making and sustaining of capitalist relations which didn’t come from heaven above but isn’t the product of a single idea but relates to the larger force of the social whole.
That capitlism is something created such that even our sense of what is natural is artificially created by human labor. All sorts of food and fruit now exist in parts of the world they didn’t originate from because of global trade. Even the potato in its origins was toxic to humans until in the high mountains of south or central america, cant remember which, it was cultivated till it was edible. We do not stand independent of what is natural but are from it. But its not simply an empirical world we’re born into wither but one of given social relations and meaning which we become acculturated to. But capitalism is no more or less ‘natural’ than any economic and political organization. But those who would seek to only emphasize it as natural would often emphasize it as universal. Hence the tendency to speak of human nature as how man ideally acts as a rational (instrumental reason) actor within capitalist relations. Many a story hides such relations as it describes humans bartering as if capitalism is merely a continuation of trade in a more complex form rather than something in its own right.

Need to interogate the categories of social and natural which still considers man not in his biosocial integrity but still as biological countered to the social. The intuition of the unity doesn’t present itself the method for actually seeing as much. But if anything is close it is found in hegels dialectics which dowsnt make descartes mistake of treating the ontological distinction between mind and matter as posing the issue of the subject object relation and neither does he make kants mistake in treating the individual as isolated from the society one exists within. The individual whilst not identical with an abdtract average of societal norms is still born from it.

Capitalism can change but not simply as a point of changing minds. Disbelieving in money doesn’t stop its function as capitalist production isnt dependent on belief and in fact informs belief of the classes. Mayerial relations need to be change and that can be done but figuring out how is the difficulty to which marx offered the best outlines of the problem of capitalist production. Which wasnt a goal to simply rationally predict production but to do away with the law of value altogether. That human relationships would in fact be to meet human development and need and not subsumed to the global economy.

Your post reminds me a lot of something RhetoricThug would write. That is as human behaviour is evident in nature so whatever we create must be natural - or in his words part of the noosphere. Although this is true, lets stick to the definitions to prevent confusion. What is created by man is artifical. If it artifical it is not natural. Capitalism does function on concepts or ideas and constructs that are invented by man. The principles of Communism are found in nature - that is cooperation and sharing the spoils amongst the community and as such does not require human thought. Nonetheless despite this, most of what you write I also agree. That is no political or economic model should be characterised as natural or unnatural. What exists is what exists and no more. But if you take away the what is imaginary and limit social laws you are in essence returning to the law of nature. And without laws and social constructs altogether, that is exactly what you have.

[late]

Whether currency is efficient or not was not my point. I have already explained it is and that even under Communism I suspect a medium will be used to exchange - just it will not be used for profit or debt.

Although this quote I find very interesting as currency may well be the reason for an economic collapse. It usually is. Unsustainable debt may well be the reason for Capitalisms future downfall. Only time will tell.

You can't regulate every aspect of an economy, and you can replace private innovation with top down research.

I don't see how that could work.

[Rich]

According to Marxists everything's the fault of evil evil WIGs, White Infidel Gentiles.

By your logic it is OK if Serbs and Croats slaughter each other. Because, you know, history.

For Marxists that's just White people being White people.

And it is OK by your logic that Tutsis and Hutus slaughter each other.

Well of course Africa was an enlightened land of peace, tolerance and prosperity, before evil White people set the good peoples of Africa against each other. You see even Palestine's our fault. Jews and Muslims are innocents of history. Israel has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewishness. Real Jews like those in Iran don't support Israel. Its all the fault of White Gentile Imperialism. Before we invaded the Middle East during the first world war, it had been peaceful, enlightened and prosperous for tens of thousands of years. Well accept for the evil Crusaders of course.

Because, you know, history. And the Koreans and Japanese can slaughter each other.

Ah tricky one, well some say the Japanese are sort of honorary White people, so that was all their fault.

[Pants-of-dog]

They are innate.

Money is value. If something is valuable it has the essence of money and can be used for that function. We are wired to sort value according to utility.

Debt / Lending is the essence of the process of evaluating social trades. Long before we stamped the faces of kings on gold we traded, owed and lent favours.

Private property is just territory. An area over which a party claims and demands authority over access.

All living creatures even ones without a central nervous system sort value according to utility. Most social animals have something like a favour tracking system. A lot of animals are territorial even the nomadic ones.

Communism was not designed for biological entities. It might work for robots though.

No.

Money, private property, debt, et cetera, as we know them came about during 5e modern era and were specifically created as a reaction to previous economic paradigms.

Private property exists because before that, the king was allowed to take anyone’s property at any time for any reason.

Money exists because it evolved out of IOUs. A ten dollar bill used to be just a piece of paper whose only worth was that you could go to the bank and trade it in for ten dollars worth of gold.

These are no more innate than conjugating French verbs is.

[B0ycey]

You can't regulate every aspect of an economy, and you can replace private innovation with top down research.

I don't see how that could work.

It can work because it has before. Although you can debate whether it is better or worse than what we have.

The solution to Capitalism is perhaps only to keep what works and change what doesn't. I only regard Marx and an economist. He is no better or worse than Adams. Both see Capitalism from different angles and both make a strong case for what can and cannot be achieved from it. I don't think Chinas growth is coincidence. They are what all economic models should inspire to be. But perhaps they are not the political model we should follow. But thats besides the point. Enterprise should be kept to the Free market and China does that. Everything else run by the state. The Soviet Union knew how to educate, house and treat their populous far better than America do today. They just couldn't compete with the Capitalists free market and ultimately that is what broke the Union not Socialism. Gorbachev was too late with Perestroika. But that doesn't mean it was a failure. It made Russia what it is today. It no longer is just a ice wasteland. It is a superpower. And one with little debt. And should dollars become monopoly money, I believe is a state that will perhaps revert back to it origins although this time perhaps less secular.

[Wellsy]

Your post reminds me a lot of something RhetoricThug would write. That is as human behaviour is evident in nature so whatever we create must be natural - or in his words part of the noosphere. Although this is true, lets stick to the definitions to prevent confusion. What is created by man is artifical. If it artifical it is not natural. Capitalism does function on concepts or ideas and constructs that are invented by man. The principles of Communism are found in nature - that is cooperation and sharing the spoils amongst the community and as such does not require human thought. Nonetheless despite this, most of what you write I also agree. That is no political or economic model should be characterised as natural or unnatural. What exists is what exists and no more. But if you take away the what is imaginary and limit social laws you are in essence returning to the law of nature. And without laws and social constructs altogether, that is exactly what you have.

My concern is that I wouldn’t even argue for communism on the basis of it being more ‘natural’.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/articles/biological-social.pdf

This line of thought, which becomes tempting under certain conditions and for certain types of people, is observed constantly in the history of theoretical culture and long ago crystallized into an entire worldview. It may be called the naturalistic view of man and his life activity.
A textbook example—we find it amusing, but it was by no means amusing in its time—is provided by the thesis of Aristotle according to which some individuals are slaves and others their masters by nature. And the most interesting thing here is that this thesis arose precisely at a time when the classical ancient society was starting to enter the phase of its decline and dissolution. This thesis arose precisely as a theoretical justification for the defense and protection of the collapsing social organization, as a counter-thesis to the demands for some other means of organizing life that were already taking vague shape in many heads.

But naturalistic explanations of certain social phenomena may be not only defensive but also destructive in character and effect. In 1789, for example, the French bourgeoisie rose up in revolution in the name of the so-called nature of man, declaring the order of feudal estates “unnatural,” contrary to “nature,” to the natural organization of human life. Conversely, the right to private property and freedom of private property were declared natural.
Thus, the naturalistic illusion may conceal either a conservative and re- actionary conception or a conception that is objectively progressive or even revolutionary. Nevertheless, in both cases this illusion remains an illusion, to which even very progressively minded people may be susceptible.
Materialist philosophy, being a principled adversary of all illusions, makes no exception for this one, which has a tendency to revive in the most unexpected forms.

And primitive man isn’t considered even more natural than modern man as he is the beginning of mans mastery of nature and himself through cultural means and tools. Man artificially puts scratches on a stick to help him remember things, this isn’t something given by nature but in mans cultural evolution to use tools to extend his natural functions such as memory.

There is a continuation between humanity in its primitive and modern forms although they are different culturally and not biologically. And thus we can see how the social forms of man change man historically such that whilst greed isn’t only found in modern man the view of it is definitely different to the position taken on the many forms taken as acceptable today. Such as charging interest rates on loans and such ie usury.