Topic: Worldwide Strike 2012 (Read 6422 times)

God damn it, have I written otherwise?

Again:  I am not saying that I am sure that in the future we will live in a money less society.   I say that to me it is possible that free market forces, along with technological developpement, slowly reduces prices so that society looks more and more like a moneyless society.

I won't write anymore here, as this thread is pissing me off.

There is no place, like Utopia.

i know that if i want to buy all copper in word, near the end of my search it would be rarer than gold and cost more, but that is not exactly relevant is it?


well, we nowhere near that, are we?

besides - i really don't think that developing machines (self sustainable, completely universal - that would require proper AI) and letting everyone to do what they WANT to do and nothing else is such a great idea

and more, nowadays one can do whatever he wants, yet we still have plenty of some rebellious bullshit, why future supposed to be so much better?


gram of gold was $5 in 1975 it is $45 now

first - almost half of price difference is inflation (whatever cost $5 in 1975 would cost $20 now)

so it is partially true, but consider one thing - products are more complex every day, they live shorter and are replaced by 'better' and dearer ones every single day
and what is more important, number of things on household is growing every day

you can get tons and tons of things you would use once or never, so even if today fridge is half the price when you add all 'necessary' things like displaying of current temp, automatically making ice cubes, auto defrosting, deep freezing, etc. etc. you end up spending same or more money for product that won't last 5 years while back then it would last 10-15 years without problems

family story: my grand grand mother bought light bulb back in 1935 (europe, gremany) and it last for 67 years - someone broke it during cleaning in 2002, today you are lucky when you get 67 days of light... producer will sell it 50 times cheaper today but it last 200 times shorter, even if they can make it last hundred years for few extra cents they won't...

we could get more better things over the time, but that is not going to happen... not only producers and marketing fault - people wants it because all those adverts, other people etc.

i used my first watch back in 1980's for more than 10 years, now i'm changing a sophisticated mobile, pc almost every couple years... partially because of new features, partially because it cost less to get new laptop than fix mobo in 5 years old...

i could get 5 or maybe 10 better watches for the money my dad paid back 1980, but who uses a watch this days? an cell phone (which costs the same) is todays watch

Yes I could.  For instance I would be more wrong if I was assuming that we can reach a moneyless society NOW, with just a political decision and authoritative measures (making money illegal, in a nutshell).

On the contrary, I say that maybe technical progress could, in future, make price of things decrease significantly, so that life is easier and stuffs appear to be essentially free.


Prices is not something that is purely proportionnal.   One thing might be cheap when you want only a small amount, but very expensive if you want a lot of it.  This happens when you request more than what production can offer.


One word:  machines.


Diamonds are a bad example as they currently can be manufactured.

Gold will probably never ever be free.  However, one gram of gold will probably get more and more purchasing power, just because stuffs will be easier and easier to produce with time.


You missed the point when I was saying that prices would GRADUALLY decrease.  Basically I'm saying we could reach a moneyless society in an asymptotic manner.  Money will still exist, but prices of stuffs will gradually get closer to zero, even if they never actually reach zero.

could you possibly be more wrong?
take a look at flat prices expressed as "hours you need to work to purchase square meter" in last 100 years

take a look at 1930  household and compare it to 2011 one
look around and think how much stuff do you poses even if it is virtually useless to you

i don't want to sound like aluminium foil hat wearing person but - most of the people in civilized countries (i.e. countries that you don't need to worry about sudden death) 
are effectively owned by banks, corporations etc. having and wanting to have more and more of unnecessary things

everyone have mobile phone, so you have to have one - otherwise you will miss a lot both in personal and professional life
when just 15 years ago nobody had one... and that costs couple hundred bucks every two years plus 20-30 monthly
sure, some people are making money with them, when for general public landline could be completely acceptable, but...

everyone need to have car (or perhaps two, three per household) in fact number of vehicles per capita in usa doubled from 1960, who is going to produce them for free and why not take one for every day of week?

now, tell me who will do all those simple and dull jobs when one won't have to?
who will be mining everyday for 30 years or staying month after month on oil platforms if they can do nothing or anything?
not everyone can be brain surgeon cowboy astronaut race driver, someone need to swept the floors and without motivation nobody is going to do that

and reason why diamonds cost that much is simple - there is less supply than demand and that is a thing that is making people pay a lot for them to actually get one

there is no way for all that to work without currency of some kind

we can satisfy all basic needs like water, bread, clothes and a piece of roof above ones head, but we cant and wont be able to give everyone Lamborghini because there is not enough of them - why? because it is taking a lot of time to make one, so instead of waiting 60 years before yours will be made for free you can get one for money now

unless there is FREE way for everyone to create stuff i.e. some nanobots putting together anything from fork to spaceship, that 'no money' dream simply won't work because people have tendency to get more than they need (and more than they can produce for others during their lives)

I have to say from all the animes i've watched I haven't come across a robot harem setup yet oO

I watched Eve no Jikan already.   Good stuff, but it's not quite the story I was describing above.

Chobits is horrid. Try Eve no Jikan, at least it's got some thinking into it.

Oh yeah I know about this anime.  I had watched the two first episodes I think.  I will go back to it and watch the full series someday.

As usual it's Japan to the rescue 

Lol

I'd like to read a SF story where the world is full of commercial robot wives, and where 'real' women have many difficulties for finding husbands, so they fundamentally go through a tough social crisis, while men are just doing well.

Yeah, baby!

Sexy Robot Slaves. 

shit, gotta get me one of those

Robot slaves.

I don't see how you guys ever expect to abolish scarcity. Even if it can be achieved with commodities (and I don't think it can), there is still scarcity in labor; i.e. it doesn't matter that I am getting this floor for free, i'm certainly not going to cook bread for you with nothing in return.

also


That just made my day. It's hilarious how hardcore socialist will deny that the actual and past communist states aren't communist. Seriously? How in the world are you going to enforce socialism without a state... goddamn kids

Utopias are nice, as long as noone tries too hard to make them come true.

Everyone on the planet moves to Australia and is given a 1/4 acre block. Then we still have Queensland and the rest of the world left vacant. We are living in a pre scarcity world and we somehow manage to produce scarcity by our very nature. "Post scarcity" is a utopian pipe dream

If everything costs $0 it doesn't matter if everyone earns $0.

Those people have a good point, they are just a few decades (centuries?) early.

Until the post scarcity economy arrives money will remain a necessary evil.

Grondilou, except for raw materials and energy.  But yes, i suspect that a free (NO IP) market, over long enought time, will reduce costs of everything else to zero.