I recommend this video which talks about bartering and how our simplistic view of bartering is quite innacurate to how things worked pre-money societies.
Andrewism is great. The majority of the video is discussing David Graebers Debt the first 5000 years which for a book about the history of debt and the relations between people in society is surprisingly entertaining. I'd recommend checking it out.
There is no evidence that bartering was a precursor to currency, in fact the opposite is more likely the case. Bartering is used by people who already have an understanding of currency when they don't have money to use.
it's a metaphysical substance with vampiric properties.
however, in my praxis and agitprop i do not fight against money or markets. i fight against capitalists inheriting all the wealth through a stock market riddled by Dark Pools and Arbitration and landlords that suck up a giant portion of our wealth (and even Adam Smith spoke against).
Yeah, it's the ultimate midwit take. Smart enough to realise it's an abstraction, not smart enough to realise that there's a base reality (goods themselves being scarce) beneath it.
Hmm, but why would a farmer provide food to people without getting anything in return? This is, assuming everyone is selfish, which is the core assumption of capitalism.
thinking that farmers should do work with nothing in return as a method of ending food insecurity is ignorant to the work being done to address food insecurity. nobody is proposing farmers should work for free. food stamps, subsidized farming, community owned farmland, urban gardening, universal basic income, food banks, all of these things and more are how we eradicate starvation, and how many other developed nations have successfully reduced food insecurity.
systems which allow people to starve are indefensible in a world where we can make enough food for people, and we absolutely can do that.
Because if the farmer doesn't, starving people will either die, or wise up and take the food by force. Usually the starving people aren't in the majority, so they work with sympathetic individuals who recognize that they might be next. So that the farmer has the resources to continue, the mob takes resources from those that have excess, by force. If the farmer is not motivated because they can't make big profit margins, then someone without the mental illness of greed will eventually replace the farmer.
someone without the mental illness of greed will eventually replace the farmer.
This would result into some kind of farm run by the community, which means that volunteers are working on the farm, providing free food to everyone. However, this begs the question if the food produced by inexperienced volunteers with good intentions is sufficient to feed an entire village, town, city or a country.
If the only options for the farmer are let people starve or get raided, why would he choose to be a farmer then? Seems more likely he'd do something else or join the mob rather than become a farmer in the first place.
This is forgetting the fact that we already socialize several things in our society. We've agreed that national protection is necessary, so if you're a citizen of most countries, you're paying taxes that pay for a military. We could very easily socialize food as well.
Take social security for example - it will provide some level of retirement, but you won't be living a life of luxury. There is no reason why we can't apply this model to food, healthcare, water, electricity, etc (and in certain circumstances, we often do.) This doesn't mean that those on medicare are being cared for while doctors are held at gunpoint, it means that we use taxes to do a tiny bit of taking care of people.
We're a society beyond real scarcity, only artificial scarcity. Our productivity levels over the last few hundred years especially has increased exponentially. Just since the 40 hour work week was standardized upon, we've made leaps and bounds but been allowed to realize none of those gains.
We're so brainwashed in the US we don't even realize that quite a few other countries already do these things more successfully than we do, and pretend like there is no other possibility.
It's not unrealistic to assume that most people don't want to do a hard, miserable, body-ruining, thankless job (i.e. farming) in exchange for absolutely nothing.
Well I mean, most of the liberal and classical economists generally try to predict the behaviors of consumers, which lead to assumptions such as "People will generally be selfish".
It is not easy to explain this with in a thread but if you learn the rise of our modern world it will make sense why there are starving people. Yes there are solutions but you can't just make everyone that happy, don't forget that humans are greedy and don't trust and cooperate with each other for no reason.
yea, sure. then think about the recent oil production downsize that the Saudis did just to keep the oil prices high because supply-demand dictates prices.
“the economy” is a social construct that is affected by reality and affects reality, but it still is not reality. it reflects what expectations people have and how they are planning based on these expectations, but all of these are choices, not inevitable forces of nature
This is like saying, "Why can't we all just pretend counterfeit money is real?" Sure, it sounds like a nice simple solution until suddenly everyone prints counterfeit money and expects to buy things that no one is producing now that an easier option has appeared.
Some social constructs are shortsighted and useless. Some are undeniably useful. However, even the ones we consider useful should be scrutinized for flaws. Otherwise we end up with an economic system that creates plenty of empty houses and scores of homeless people, and massive amounts of annual food waste while thousands upon thousands starve.