Originally posted by grapesofraft
How would we buy anything that was expensive, like a house, a car, another business, etc?

How would the world function without some form of money?

Am I missing some profound sort of knowledge or something?

How did it function before money?
Why were people less controlled and had more freedom before money??
You see before money, we made things, built things, created things, together.
Everyone took part everyone helped and played a part.
And everyone got some of the benefits.
Now, everyone makes things for a minority few to create wealth for them and give them a great existence and power and control over everyone else.
And gets nothing more out of it other than existing.

Wow if this argument isn't the most pin-headed thing iv'e ever heard then i dont know what is.

Bottom line. -The monetary system was good, it is now bad. Money used to be a great way to measure what is mine and what is yours, and how we came to accumulate it. However because money is now so easily manipulated it is begining to lose all meaning to some people and has become the meaning of life for some. Do you know why you shouldn't be aloud to buy a 500k house? Because one day you die, and unless you feel it's necessary to own a house that your entire lineage can continue to live in then you dont need it.

The monetary system in todays age is no doubt way out of balance, im not against being wealthy, but wealth is not necessary for happiness.

Happiness and fullfillment have not ever came from materiel things, and frankly evolution is tired of us waiting to figure that out for ourselves.

Technological singularity will make a resource based economy possible, and not only possible, but our entire idea of what society is like will be completely forgotten because of the technology we will have created. As many of us have been educated to understand, the monetary system is based off of, and propagates-Scarcity. It's really that simple, so long as we look at the world in terms of scarcity and "Not enough" we will never create abundance.

If you even had the slightest clue about the possibilities of nano-technology and contelligence, you would understand that we shouldn't be focusing on "If its a good idea" But rather on "Think of all the things we could do then..."

Infinite Virtual Reality
Molecular Manipulation
Interplanetary Construction

Im not going to go back through this thread and pick out all of the things that Grapesofraft and others have said about a RBE simply because they're just plain examples of the institution trying to preserve itself, the monetary system was great sure but...

We have around 1 billion people starving in the world, and its not getting fixed becase theres no money in that problem.

We could be creating clean energy technology and possibly preserving our Earth in many ways at the same time, but theres not alot of profit in preservation, expecially not in energy preservation.
As a matter of fact we have a new tax because of an exploit on the idea that CO2 should be taxed. Thats a doubly whammy, theyre tricking people into believing they are helping the enviorment by charging them for it.

before Ronald Reagen, the average CEO of a company made 30x the amount the average worker. (35k a year employee, 1mill for CEO)

Since his tax cuts and similar cuts through history primarily bush, we now have the average CEO making over 500 times the average worker. Does the CEO of that company really put over 500 times the value into society as any one of his workers? Really it would be nice if they could reinvest that money back into their company like they used to , but he was too busy trying to buy a Royce with solid gold rims.

Anyway now im rambling about the apparent corruptions in the monetary system. However my point really is this- The resource based economy isn't possible yet because it requires two things that are definately comming and growing everyday, but aren't mature enough yet, and those two things are Technoloy and Conciousness. Time will show that we humans were always ment to live similar to the ways of the Venus Project. Time will demonstrate what is true.

You don't have to be uneducated to think a world without money is possible. I'm educated but I still think its possible. I haven't put a lot of thought into it but I don't think its that awfully hard to imagine. IMO the resources would not be controlled by a nation wide sort of system. I'm sure resources would be sent to places that needed them but it would be more self sufficient communities making up the cities and such. The food would come from a community farm/garden that all the inhabitants would tend to. Within the region or community there would be workshops, mines, construction sites, refineries, machine shops, etc, to make different sorts of tools, machine and machine parts, cut lumber, cloth, or whatever else is needed at the time according to availability of resources. They would be built by the community it was in but available to all who choose to use it. There would be no 9-5's because it would be a do it yourself kind of thing. Everyone would be taught the maths, the different sciences, cultivation, masonry, plumbing, and any other trade you can think of. Electricity would come from wind or solar until something better is engineered. The cooperation between neighbors of the community would bring people closer to that all love, no hate state of being. Thats just my opinion though, of course.

[edit on 7/1/2009 by ALOTOFBS]

[edit on 7/1/2009 by ALOTOFBS]

Originally posted by munkey66
indidionous tribes from all around the world seemed to cope fine with no money, the entire village shared all recources as well as materials and tools.

I think the uneducated ones cannot see a way of doing it

Prices go up precisely because people can get loans to pay more money for cars and houses.

Originally posted by CharlesMartel

Originally posted by munkey66

Prices go up precisely because people can get loans to pay more money for cars and houses.

You are correct, but I dont see how it has anything to do with the guy you quoted or this thread.