What if you didn't need money to live?
@Coffee you don't need money to live. You need money to live better than having to kill to survive and living in the mud.
Money is just an abstraction of human organization. If you want to live without money, it isn't that you want to live without money, it is that you are in abusive relationships with who you trade your effort to for money and who you spend it on to get what you need. Break those relationships and find new ones, and you won't mind money so much.
@mister_monster Surely you mean, "other than to live in prison".
Kill what? Poaching is illegal, and so is killing domestic animals.
The problem is that human organization has spread everywhere. There is no "out", and abusive relationships are forced upon us.
Even if you buy land once, so you can live from it, you have to pay ongoing land tax, and that has to be paid in money.
@Coffee as far as property taxes, IMO they're the only just taxes because they ensure that your property is defended for you. Ask the Polish if they'd rather pay property taxes or have their eastern and western borders undefended.
You cannot truly own land unless you can defend it, and you can't. The world is an anarchy where the strong have already won. I'm just glad that where I live the strong is a republic created to serve my interests and not Xi Jinping or Jean-Bédel Bokassa.
@Coffee Imagine you're running around with a loincloth hunting monkeys with a blow dart and the neighboring tribe is plotting to massacre you and steal your daughters. This was the norm for humanity until 100 years ago. The fact that we have created a system that uplifts even 1 person from that is a miracle.
Even being able to think about our current system critically is a privilege afforded to is by the system we are criticizing. And being free to talk about it, try that in China.
@mister_monster What you're describing is how it was up to 12.000 years ago. The reality between then and now has been, and continues to be, agriculture.
And how can you be so sure that life was that brutal way back then? If I discount movies, I have zero reason to believe that, and actual anthropological research seems to point in the opposite direction.
Not that life was perfect and nothing bad ever happened, but neither is it now.
Also, did you notice yourself just now arguing along the lines of "the system allows us to criticize it, and therefore, we shouldn't"?
It's subtle, isn't it?
@Coffee well, that's not what I said. My point was basically, the fact that you are capable of taking time out of your life to worry about things like this means your life is comparatively easy. I doubt farmers in Congo have time to think about whether money is something they want or not. Our lives are easier than theirs because our system is more effective. It's not that we shouldn't criticize it, it is that we should have some perspective and acknowledge first what we get from it.
@mister_monster Ah, ok. Acknowledged.
Now imagine what it could be like if you didn't need money to live.
@mister_monster
> The world is an anarchy where the strong have already won.
Exactly this.
Too bad the strong are also stupid, and are driving the system to make the planet uninhabitable.
Try zooming out further. You work for the system, unless you are homeless or in prison (and in some cases even then). All the better that it has convinced you that it is serving your interests.
Had you been born in China, you might think Xi Jinping is great, especially if you're better off than most.