The idea that social structures have a "logical end" is pure hubris and have no basis on reality.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
8 points (63.3% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35311 readers
859 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
no
The title and question are different, what exactly are you asking? I don't see currency as a concept ever going away.
It really is the most efficient way to manage and trade scarce resources. Going back to a barter system wouldn't be possible with the size and scope of a global economy.
Not until we reach a post-scarcity society.
We're already there. The only thing preventing it is tribalism and the world oligarchs. We have the knowledge and capabilities, just not the willingness.
I'm not sure you know what post scarcity means.
Imagine a world where nobody needs to work, but everyone can still have any material desire filled at any time.
Think Star Trek. Unlimited energy resources, combined with replicators which use that endless energy to create unlimited stuff without any labor required.
It's also important to note that a lot of that scarcity is artificial. Sure, we're far from post scarcity, but strife is exacerbated by capitalist systems in all but the most privileged.
Hohoho we are very far from post scarcity. Read any newspaper.
Their usefulness to whom
Humans are not known for solving problems on time
Capitalism is fine, we just need to tweak regulations for it to better incentivize the result we (humanity) are looking for.
I wish I had your confidence that capitalism can be tweaked into a fair system.
I honestly think the logical end point to capitalism is self-destructive extreme wealth disparity.
It works in cycles.
The last Guilded Age (think Roaring 20s) ended with the great depression. Which then triggered the creation of all the great economic policies the boomers enjoyed as children, which they've been dismantling since the 70s.
Once things get bad enough, (very nearly there now) the cycle will repeat.
Why do you think this, and what does cycle even mean in this context? If everything is just a cycle repeating, couldn't you argue we're also frozen in a non-cyclic lack of progression?
Those are very big questions. This Wikipedia Page is a good place to start.
The simple answer is, everything humanity does happens in cycles.
But you can think of it as roller-coaster passing through an infinite series of loops. We keep going forward in the long run. But but the repeating loops take us up and down, even upside down and backwards along the way. In every case, coming down each loop gives us the momentum to reach the next one.
No.
First we need a better system for resource allocation. Monetary systems are extremely inefficient, but they're far better than the "trust me, bro" approach of many of the alternatives.
A global post-scarcity society could in theory take over, similar to how it works in Star Trek, but there are a lot of other hurdles that need to be overcome first.
As long as proper distribution of resources requires an effort, it will also need an incentive to do so. Currently this incentive is provided by allowing for a profit margin, and while this does also provide a mechanism for skimming off the top, at least said skimming can be somewhat controlled by a free market ensuring better circumstances for those willing to skim less.
I'm quite curious to know what you mean by 'usefulness' in this context?
No. The concept of money is millenia old and likely too useful to discard. What MIGHT change is how that money is implemented. Wouldn’t be the first time either.
It’s pretty hard to imagine a way for groups of people with varying goals and interests to operate without some form of value exchange. This can either be barter, or some form of currency. Our specific kind of extractive capitalism based on creating endless cycles of debt and credit can certainly be replaced with any number of alternatives, but the idea of money itself is just too basic and useful to humans, imo.
As much as in the 70's when folks said the same or the 40's or at the turn of the century.