We're total slaves to this abstraction of money. The anecdote from the Great Depression of the farmer who shot his flock of sheep rather than taking them to slaughter, because it would cost more for the slaughterhouse to butcher them than he could sell it for has stuck with me. Same with the rotting piles of fruit in fields, because it wasn't economically viable to sell, all while people went hungry.
It's so absurd that everything can come to a grinding halt because the bank can't change some ones and zeroes on a hard-drive.
I understand why money exists. What breaks my brain is that we have come to value money, the abstract thing that was created to facilitate smoother transaction of goods and services over the real work that produces those goods and services. These abstractions build upon each other and now we have things like the crypto predictions markets.
You're right that it does come down to human failings in the end. If society had perfect trust, you could just remove money, and everyone trusted that if they kept working at their little slice of society producing food, delivering things, generating power or whatnot and that everyone else would keep working on their part, things would hum along.
But during a financial crisis the flow of money stops and then the real labor stops. The REAL crisis isn't that fictional ones and zeros stopped flowing. It's that people stopped doing the REAL labor, because they were no longer receiving the abstract money.
Ultimately it's just a artifact of large human society. You don't charge your spouse a delivery fee when you pick up food for them, or when you take out the trash, etc lol because you understand that it's a reciprocal relationship. That's really all we use money for, a token of trust that me doing my little part now will get resources that you produce when I need it.
Thanks for weighing in again thoughtfully. The stacked abstractions, like crypto prediction markets, are worrisome seeing how it usually attracts the most vulnerable. Hppefully we see an end to these someday.
On another part of your comment, perfect trust, I do agree that a world without money is possible within your proposed situation. My question to you now is: in a situation with perfect trust, what would motivate someone to break it for personal gain? Is it the reward itself or the fact that they think they won't be dealing with any consequences? To me, that last question is also part of the 'benefit' of abstraction to malicious actors. Maybe you see other reasons/explanations and I'm curious!
I think that question is a central one that divides people politically.
The belief that people are inherently bad and without laws and the need for money to keep them working, they'll just do nothing. That lines up with a lot of conservative thinking and policy.
Whereas if you think that if people were freed from the need for money they could do more fulfilling things, be more creative, and would still contribute to society.
Of course I think reality is most people fall somewhere in the middle. The perfect moneyless utopia is like actual communism on paper right, but no one's figured out how to make that work in the real-world.
I think we should still strive toward it though, test things like UBI, sure you'll have bad actors but the net positive would much outweigh it imo, same as data shows welfare programs are huge net positive despite the propaganda about "welfare queens" and whatnot.
Thanks for weighing in again thoughtfully. The stacked abstractions, like crypto prediction markets, are worrisome seeing how it usually attracts the most vulnerable. Hppefully we see an end to these someday.
On another part of your comment, perfect trust, I do agree that a world without money is possible within your proposed situation. My question to you now is: in a situation with perfect trust, what would motivate someone to break it for personal gain? Is it the reward itself or the fact that they think they won't be dealing with any consequences? To me, that last question is also part of the 'benefit' of abstraction to malicious actors. Maybe you see other reasons/explanations and I'm curious!
And yet, people believe data centers are the worst thing to happen to humanity but these banks (and all of our society) can't realistically function without them.
Man!!! I just had a whole existential crisis about how the weather on the weekends have been shit and the weather while I’m at work is beautiful. I started wondering why am I continuing this cycle and expecting life to suddenly become more favorable to me and my wants. I want to still have the purpose and security of money but I want a life beyond that.
I just paid off my credit card, bought a bunch of solar and have recently been killing it with gardening.
I’m an industrial mechanic by trade and my wife is carpentry and residential electrically trained.
My whole goal right now is to save enough of a nest egg to move to our 360 acre plot we bought 2 years ago. We will figure it out from there but breaking the cycle of money and spending it is something we struggle to break.
Everyone has a similar goal and plans for their homestead life, but no one has a plan on how to break the monotony of our “place” in society
The alienation and isolation created in our society makes it so much more difficult to do what you're describing. It's so alien to us to work collectively, like think of the reductions in cost and labor to set-up what you're describing if you had a community of a dozen people, and the additional security that would bring in terms of knowledge and skills.
But that'd be a huge pain in the ass to figure out in today's world eh, from the legalities to who owns what and what happens if we don't get along, and so you've gotta do it all alone.
You put it so well, alienation. Crabs in a bucket almost seems fitting too!
I totally understand what you mean with the collective of like minded people but funnily enough, that’s one of my big pushes out of here.
We formed villages for that exact reason. One man hunts, 3 people cook, the whole village eats. We found that sharing the load reduced the individual stress that any member felt at one time. Fast forward to today and we have forgotten why we formed these pockets of population. Now we all see each others as hindering to our own lives and forget to make other peoples lives easier.
It used to be if you did your job, you did your part for society; now go home and be a good parent. Now performing your job well for less than liveable wages is the bare minimum you can do for society. Sometimes people feel like you impact on society isn’t as much as theirs and treat you as such like some capitalistic caste system.
It’s whatever, the newest iPhone or celebrity news or sports draft picks; are enough to keep people preoccupied. They will maybe experience discontent between their scheduled programs, but never actually ask “why?”.
Haha I can't take credit, I was just reading about Marx's theory of alienation and then your comment was a real life example of the point.
"At its core, it posits that under the capitalist mode of production, workers are inevitably separated from the products they create, the activity of production, their fellow human beings, and their own creative potential.
First, the worker is alienated from the product of their labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist and confronts the worker as a hostile power. Second, they are alienated from the activity of production itself, which is experienced not as a fulfilling expression of creativity but as coerced, meaningless toil. Third, this leads to alienation from their own human nature, or species-being (Gattungswesen), as free, conscious activity is reduced to a mere means of survival. Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community."
yeah except /u/hehealthygamer 's is just the other side of the coin. Gain no doubt: Marx's ideology also revolves around work. And every single government that tried implementing its policies, just ended up doing the same atrocities, as they never got past the "temporary state" phase. Almost as if authority itself is bad... (besides the point that a lot of these people are grifters, that just use left language trying to bait you in)
If you want real change in your life, look for anarchism as a philosophy. I am not saying you should become one, but at least it's a philosophy that could work without a human's worth being defined whether if he works and what he works.
Right? I've been so anti-communist my whole life, I expected it to be dry boring bullshit but it's actually very philosophical and exactly describes life in the U.S. under capitalism.
Looks similar to something that happened with Barclays in the UK last year. It was on the traditional payday and people’s pay checks weren’t going in, couldn’t make payments online, or withdraw cash. That’s when I set up a second checking/current account with a debit card with a different bank. Also, fwiw, I never use that second account debit card online, it’s not in my apple wallet…in person transactions only. Feels like an extra layer of security in these strange times.
Thehealthygamer@reddit
We're total slaves to this abstraction of money. The anecdote from the Great Depression of the farmer who shot his flock of sheep rather than taking them to slaughter, because it would cost more for the slaughterhouse to butcher them than he could sell it for has stuck with me. Same with the rotting piles of fruit in fields, because it wasn't economically viable to sell, all while people went hungry.
It's so absurd that everything can come to a grinding halt because the bank can't change some ones and zeroes on a hard-drive.
Tiny_Time_4196@reddit
Once you learn about trading and economics I think the existence of money will make more sense.
PrairieFire_withwind@reddit
There is a book that will help.
It is called ' the unaccountability machine'
Thehealthygamer@reddit
I understand why money exists. What breaks my brain is that we have come to value money, the abstract thing that was created to facilitate smoother transaction of goods and services over the real work that produces those goods and services. These abstractions build upon each other and now we have things like the crypto predictions markets.
You're right that it does come down to human failings in the end. If society had perfect trust, you could just remove money, and everyone trusted that if they kept working at their little slice of society producing food, delivering things, generating power or whatnot and that everyone else would keep working on their part, things would hum along.
But during a financial crisis the flow of money stops and then the real labor stops. The REAL crisis isn't that fictional ones and zeros stopped flowing. It's that people stopped doing the REAL labor, because they were no longer receiving the abstract money.
Ultimately it's just a artifact of large human society. You don't charge your spouse a delivery fee when you pick up food for them, or when you take out the trash, etc lol because you understand that it's a reciprocal relationship. That's really all we use money for, a token of trust that me doing my little part now will get resources that you produce when I need it.
Tiny_Time_4196@reddit
Thanks for weighing in again thoughtfully. The stacked abstractions, like crypto prediction markets, are worrisome seeing how it usually attracts the most vulnerable. Hppefully we see an end to these someday.
On another part of your comment, perfect trust, I do agree that a world without money is possible within your proposed situation. My question to you now is: in a situation with perfect trust, what would motivate someone to break it for personal gain? Is it the reward itself or the fact that they think they won't be dealing with any consequences? To me, that last question is also part of the 'benefit' of abstraction to malicious actors. Maybe you see other reasons/explanations and I'm curious!
Thehealthygamer@reddit
I think that question is a central one that divides people politically.
The belief that people are inherently bad and without laws and the need for money to keep them working, they'll just do nothing. That lines up with a lot of conservative thinking and policy.
Whereas if you think that if people were freed from the need for money they could do more fulfilling things, be more creative, and would still contribute to society.
Of course I think reality is most people fall somewhere in the middle. The perfect moneyless utopia is like actual communism on paper right, but no one's figured out how to make that work in the real-world.
I think we should still strive toward it though, test things like UBI, sure you'll have bad actors but the net positive would much outweigh it imo, same as data shows welfare programs are huge net positive despite the propaganda about "welfare queens" and whatnot.
Tiny_Time_4196@reddit
Thanks for weighing in again thoughtfully. The stacked abstractions, like crypto prediction markets, are worrisome seeing how it usually attracts the most vulnerable. Hppefully we see an end to these someday.
On another part of your comment, perfect trust, I do agree that a world without money is possible within your proposed situation. My question to you now is: in a situation with perfect trust, what would motivate someone to break it for personal gain? Is it the reward itself or the fact that they think they won't be dealing with any consequences? To me, that last question is also part of the 'benefit' of abstraction to malicious actors. Maybe you see other reasons/explanations and I'm curious!
iridescent-shimmer@reddit
And yet, people believe data centers are the worst thing to happen to humanity but these banks (and all of our society) can't realistically function without them.
snasna102@reddit
Man!!! I just had a whole existential crisis about how the weather on the weekends have been shit and the weather while I’m at work is beautiful. I started wondering why am I continuing this cycle and expecting life to suddenly become more favorable to me and my wants. I want to still have the purpose and security of money but I want a life beyond that.
I just paid off my credit card, bought a bunch of solar and have recently been killing it with gardening.
I’m an industrial mechanic by trade and my wife is carpentry and residential electrically trained.
My whole goal right now is to save enough of a nest egg to move to our 360 acre plot we bought 2 years ago. We will figure it out from there but breaking the cycle of money and spending it is something we struggle to break.
Everyone has a similar goal and plans for their homestead life, but no one has a plan on how to break the monotony of our “place” in society
Thehealthygamer@reddit
The alienation and isolation created in our society makes it so much more difficult to do what you're describing. It's so alien to us to work collectively, like think of the reductions in cost and labor to set-up what you're describing if you had a community of a dozen people, and the additional security that would bring in terms of knowledge and skills.
But that'd be a huge pain in the ass to figure out in today's world eh, from the legalities to who owns what and what happens if we don't get along, and so you've gotta do it all alone.
snasna102@reddit
You put it so well, alienation. Crabs in a bucket almost seems fitting too!
I totally understand what you mean with the collective of like minded people but funnily enough, that’s one of my big pushes out of here.
We formed villages for that exact reason. One man hunts, 3 people cook, the whole village eats. We found that sharing the load reduced the individual stress that any member felt at one time. Fast forward to today and we have forgotten why we formed these pockets of population. Now we all see each others as hindering to our own lives and forget to make other peoples lives easier.
It used to be if you did your job, you did your part for society; now go home and be a good parent. Now performing your job well for less than liveable wages is the bare minimum you can do for society. Sometimes people feel like you impact on society isn’t as much as theirs and treat you as such like some capitalistic caste system.
It’s whatever, the newest iPhone or celebrity news or sports draft picks; are enough to keep people preoccupied. They will maybe experience discontent between their scheduled programs, but never actually ask “why?”.
Thehealthygamer@reddit
Haha I can't take credit, I was just reading about Marx's theory of alienation and then your comment was a real life example of the point.
"At its core, it posits that under the capitalist mode of production, workers are inevitably separated from the products they create, the activity of production, their fellow human beings, and their own creative potential.
First, the worker is alienated from the product of their labour, which is appropriated by the capitalist and confronts the worker as a hostile power. Second, they are alienated from the activity of production itself, which is experienced not as a fulfilling expression of creativity but as coerced, meaningless toil. Third, this leads to alienation from their own human nature, or species-being (Gattungswesen), as free, conscious activity is reduced to a mere means of survival. Finally, the worker is alienated from other people, as social relationships become reified and mediated by market exchange, fostering competition and indifference rather than community."
snasna102@reddit
God dam that’s depressingly eloquent phrasing of how I’ve been feeling!
Thank you so much for sharing that as I feel a bit more validated and less like a mopey little b*tch
ThaOppanHaimar@reddit
yeah except /u/hehealthygamer 's is just the other side of the coin. Gain no doubt: Marx's ideology also revolves around work. And every single government that tried implementing its policies, just ended up doing the same atrocities, as they never got past the "temporary state" phase. Almost as if authority itself is bad... (besides the point that a lot of these people are grifters, that just use left language trying to bait you in)
If you want real change in your life, look for anarchism as a philosophy. I am not saying you should become one, but at least it's a philosophy that could work without a human's worth being defined whether if he works and what he works.
Thehealthygamer@reddit
Right? I've been so anti-communist my whole life, I expected it to be dry boring bullshit but it's actually very philosophical and exactly describes life in the U.S. under capitalism.
MrD3a7h@reddit
Ah, the ol reddit marx-a-roo.
Good stuff. Class consciousness is one of the only realistic ways out of this mess.
fragrant-final-973@reddit
Well, 5/9 is this week!
Girafferage@reddit
Wut
bonchening@reddit
Mr. Robot, my mind went to this too when I read the headline
7o7A1@reddit
ConferenceSudden1519@reddit
Saved this thanks it’s so beautiful
StrykerWyfe@reddit
Looks similar to something that happened with Barclays in the UK last year. It was on the traditional payday and people’s pay checks weren’t going in, couldn’t make payments online, or withdraw cash. That’s when I set up a second checking/current account with a debit card with a different bank. Also, fwiw, I never use that second account debit card online, it’s not in my apple wallet…in person transactions only. Feels like an extra layer of security in these strange times.
pennydreadful20@reddit
I do the same!!
RhythmQueenTX@reddit
I have a second bank account as well. Just makes sense these days. Oh, and money at home.
BigJSunshine@reddit
Smart!