Money

[Sativarg]

And I know that no won thought of money, but it had to start some were, right?

When I typed "No one ever thought of money and no one ever did." I was being a kinda smart-ass cause you wrote "if the above statement was true?" so I made a statment and put it above. Sorry. :D

[ResidentWeevil2077]

Well, here's what I think:

1) The world would probably not only be different, but would most likely look different. I can't elaborate too much, but I know the world we live in today wouldn't be the way it is if money was taken out of the equation.

2) Not really - at least, not in the sense we would think of some thing's "value". Of course there would have to be some form of value placed upon goods, services, etc. but it wouldn't be monetary.

3) I'd like to think so. For one, money seems to be both a help AND a hindrance, depending on what end of the wealth spectrum you are. Someone couldn't be judged by how much money they make in year, rather they'd be judged by the quality of work they do. "Work" is anything we do today, just that it wouldn't be rewarded with a paycheck every two wks.

4) No comment.

 

The whole issue of $$$ means different things to different people; it all depends upon what end of the wealth spectrum you're at that determines what your response will be. A dirt-poor person may loathe the usage of money, whereas someone who's well-off might appreciate raking in a decent sum of cash.

[xenxander]

Well, here's what I think:

2) Not really - at least, not in the sense we would think of some thing's "value". Of course there would have to be some form of value placed upon goods, services, etc. but it wouldn't be monetary.

3) I'd like to think so. For one, money seems to be both a help AND a hindrance, depending on what end of the wealth spectrum you are. Someone couldn't be judged by how much money they make in year, rather they'd be judged by the quality of work they do. "Work" is anything we do today, just that it wouldn't be rewarded with a paycheck every two wks.

 

The whole issue of $$$ means different things to different people; it all depends upon what end of the wealth spectrum you're at that determines what your response will be. A dirt-poor person may loathe the usage of money, whereas someone who's well-off might appreciate raking in a decent sum of cash.

 

2. As soon as you establish a 'value' for something, you've recreated 'currency'. This is a trap - a catch22. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I recall that PURE Communists societies all live by such values where everyone does what they need to do, for the benifit of the entire community, without a thought as to receiving money. Unfortunately, communism only works on paper and because as I have stated, people have 'inherit greed' <~ we all desire to occur 'wealth', of one form or another.

 

3. the quality of work would be a very shady area. As there are no "unimportant" jobs, it would be treading on thin glass as to how 'well' someone is doing a job that seems trivial (such as washing windows or cleaning up the horse crap after the Mardi Gras parade). Once can do either of those jobs very well indeed, but the time and effort involved is much less than working out a technical problem with software or creating a photoshop logo for a company <~ yes these can take many days / weeks, as I've done them before. Because of this factor, we develope a 'value' for jobs related to difficulty and / or education requirement.

[Abramul]

'Value' isn't the same thing as 'currency'. The defining characteristic of currency, I think, is that it's an acceptable medium of exchange to anyone. Five sacks of potatoes might be a fair trade for two chickens, but if the person you're trying to barter with doesn't like potatoes, they won't make the trade.

 

The ability to be stored without degrading might also be important.

[NewtC]

'Value' isn't the same thing as 'currency'. The defining characteristic of currency, I think, is that it's an acceptable medium of exchange to anyone. Five sacks of potatoes might be a fair trade for two chickens, but if the person you're trying to barter with doesn't like potatoes, they won't make the trade.

 

The ability to be stored without degrading might also be important.

 

True, but money today is just little peices of paper and metal. What would the value of a cow be, if you were paying in little peices of paper? Doesn't that seem to be little odd? What I'm trying to say is, currency itself doesn't actually have as much defined value as it used to have. People used to use silver in the quarters, but now there value is the same, even though they have taken the silver out. Also, the person trying to barter with potatoes could ask the person if they could teach them how to raise chickens.

[Jumonji]

'Value' isn't the same thing as 'currency'. The defining characteristic of currency, I think, is that it's an acceptable medium of exchange to anyone. Five sacks of potatoes might be a fair trade for two chickens, but if the person you're trying to barter with doesn't like potatoes, they won't make the trade.

 

The ability to be stored without degrading might also be important.

 

True, but money today is just little peices of paper and metal. What would the value of a cow be, if you were paying in little peices of paper? Doesn't that seem to be little odd? What I'm trying to say is, currency itself doesn't actually have as much defined value as it used to have. People used to use silver in the quarters, but now there value is the same, even though they have taken the silver out. Also, the person trying to barter with potatoes could ask the person if they could teach them how to raise chickens.

 

Currency is defined by the honor system. We know what the "prices" of things are, so we trade something of value (usually our time) for money based on what we think the money will buy us later. The paper itself (or the electrons in some bank's computer) have no intrinsic value at all. It's all based on trust.

 

When we worry that the money won't be able to buy us as much tomorrow, then we demand more of the money now.. this is inflation. Sometimes this happens from simple fear, and sometimes it's very real because the government prints more money and we know that the things we want to buy will be sold before we get there (with all this new money floating around) so we "devalue" the money that is paid to us for our work.

 

Honor combined with supply and demand equals money and currency value.

[NewtC]

Jumonji: Very well put. I never thought of the honer system when the value of money is decided. Currency is mainly the amount of trust we give to someone as payment. But is it a good idea to measure the amount of trust given in a matarial item?

[Jhaerlyn]

...the first problem is that the subject line perpetuates the misquoting of the original statement... which, when translated, states, "the love of money is the root of many[all sorts of] evils.."

 

 

So, the world would still suck, becuase the other evils that have nothing to do with the love of money would still exist ... like porking your neighbor's wife, daughter and/or dog. just to start .... and no, this isn't a RELIGIOUS comment so PLEASE do not padlock this thread because of it. I would rather have my post stricken with a message saying [sMELT OF RELIGION] than to have you pad lock this one. :D

[ninja_lord666]

Jumonji: Very well put. I never thought of the honer system when the value of money is decided. Currency is mainly the amount of trust we give to someone as payment. But is it a good idea to measure the amount of trust given in a matarial item?

Actually, money doesn't have value because we say it does; it has value because the government says it does. The government says a ten dollar bill is worth ten dollars, so it is. When we give someone money, we're not trusting them, we're trusting the government. We're trusting that the government will make sure that money has and will always have value. The only trust we're putting in the other person is that they give me the item I just bought.

[Jumonji]

Actually, money doesn't have value because we say it does; it has value because the government says it does. The government says a ten dollar bill is worth ten dollars, so it is. When we give someone money, we're not trusting them, we're trusting the government. We're trusting that the government will make sure that money has and will always have value. The only trust we're putting in the other person is that they give me the item I just bought.

 

This is less true now than ever. How much of your money is actually in government-issued paper bills? I bet most of it is in the form of bits in some bank's computer, where it was "stored" when your employer sent some of it's electrically-encoded information bits to it. Then you "spend your governemt-guarenteed dollars" by swiping that bank's credit card magnetic strip over a store's scanner that then sends a signal to your bank to change the bit-pattern it uses to reprepresent your account balance.

 

So - yes we trust the government to enforce the value of it's currency, but we also trust many private institutions to honor the intent of information that represents the buying power of that government currency.

 

-Jumonji