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cah11 t1_jeaob03 wrote

Reply to comment by IwishIcouldBeWitty in Four bankers who helped Putin’s friend set up Swiss bank account convicted by BezugssystemCH1903

I mean, part of the problem of a bartering system is that different things are valued differently by different people. If you tried to run a whole national, nevermind worldwide, economy through bartering it would fall apart almost immediately because no one would be able to agree what was worth what to everyone else.

That's why the concept of a reserve currency exists. A denomination of bank notes where everyone agrees that $1 is $1, and then you base everyone else's currency more or less around that. Saying the use of currency is the root problem with all the world's wealth disparity problems isn't even close to the mark.

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IwishIcouldBeWitty t1_jearnoc wrote

You're not getting the concept. I'm sorry I did a poor job explaining it.

Money's fake. It's made of paper. It has no true value. You can maybe light it on fire and gain some heat from it. It's actually uses are very limited.

What you explain to me was how money evolved to exist in the first place. Yes we all had to agree on the price of something and that's how money came about. Thanks for the history lesson that I already understand.

But listen to this. Im going to continue to say money is worthless. What is money backed in. It used to be backed in gold and other precious metals or other precious items I should say. But who determined the value of these precious metals and items as well. Back in the day. Why was gold so valued?? It's a weak metal? It only looks pretty kind of... It doesn't rust so that's nice.... But there aren't a lot of practical uses for gold either other than.... It looks good. So why do we have the gold standard or at least used to have the gold standard? All this was agreed upon by rich people in the past who had all the gold and set the standards. It was based off of people wanting that rare metal and willing to exchange other goods for it.

All we have to just do as a society is say Bitcoin is our new currency f*** the American dollar and everybody's dollars in the bank would be absolutely worthless. Are you not understanding now what I'm trying to get at??

Money doesn't matter. Only assets matter. And when it comes to assets, only assets that can return a positive yield matter. So gold and other precious metals. Probably not so much. Well gold is getting more valuable as days goes on because we use it in electronics now but back in the day they didn't do that. When they decided gold was really expensive they didn't have electricity. I did it solely on supply versus demand because it looked pretty and there's not a lot of it.

If you're trapped on an island with all this money and another person but the other person has knowledge about how to survive and you don't. Who's going to survive? you with all the money or the person who knows how to survive but can only sustain themselves? Surely they're not going to accept your worthless money on this island where they can't spend it. So who has the power in that situation? The person with the money or the person with the knowledge? F*** what if you had money but they woke up 6 hours before you and collected all the food on the island? Who has the power then the one with the money or the one with the food?? Everything is circumstantial, you don't get it. We allow them to have power because we allow them to. We are sheep get it through your head? Actually, if you can't understand this concept, you are quite the genetically modified sheep like you are so domesticated it's not even funny. And yes I did. Just refer to human as a domesticated animal.

Shall we talk about the arbitrary laws that lock up breeding males during their prime breeding ages?? Specifically, males that are you know not fully domesticated to our society. Then if we think a bigger picture about genetics and eugenics and whatnot and how we domesticated regular livestock if all these males of breading age are locked up. They won't breed and pass on that non-compliant genetic material. Whereas the good little compliant boys will be out free passing on their genetic material and their "nurturing" bringing up their children to be just as naive and stupid as themselves.

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cah11 t1_jeau6fg wrote

I understood your point quite well, the problem is your solution won't work at any kind of national or worldwide scale. Having an arbitrarily valued currency is the inevitable end state of any kind of economy spanning more than a couple thousand people clustered in the same place geographically.

Using your example of someone having survival knowledge versus practically useless pieces of paper only matters under the assumptions that:

  1. There is no viable method of fast, mass transit.

  2. There is no viable method of (near enough) instantaneous communication.

  3. There is no longer a functional, centralized federal government.

I find your insinuation that anyone (myself included) who doesn't agree with you on this point is a:

>genetically modified sheep like you are so domesticated it's not even funny

To be quite insulting, so this is the last time I will respond to you.

Have a good rest of your life!

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IwishIcouldBeWitty t1_jeb07ft wrote

I don't know why you think I'm trying to come up with a solution.

I'm not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I'm solving a problem. I am simply pointing out concepts. You're the one applying these concepts as solutions. I'm merely pointing out the fact that money is fake and arbitrary and so is power. Where are we solving something. Im merely pointing out the fact that people assume rich people are powerful, because they've acquired a lot of wealth but in the grand scheme of things money means nothing and it's not a true indicator of power.

You are the one over here taking this concept and applying it saying that we should get rid of money and whatnot. I just made the point that we could go to a bartering system and get rid of money and rich people would have no power anymore. You got hung up on the back to a bordering system. It's going to be really difficult and the prices will be arbitrary which was the exact point that I was making with money being arbitrary in itself.

You're the one getting hung up and continuing to argue about things that are off topic, then you claim to understand the concept that I'm trying to make. Yet You're talking right past me because you're applying the concept when I'm not applying the concept im merely getting it out to people who don't fully understand it cuz not everyone understands this concept.

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notrevealingrealname t1_jece7eb wrote

> I’m not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I’m solving a problem.

If you’re not trying to do these things then what’s the purpose of your comments?

>I am simply pointing out concepts.

Which, without the eventual lead-in to a proposed solution, is as relevant to the debate as pointing out the concept of gravity or time- not at all.

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cah11 t1_jecftau wrote

Don't bother engaging, my read on them is they aren't interested in a good faith discussion, they're here to collect upvotes while arguing:

> I don't know why you think I'm trying to come up with a solution. I'm not trying to solve any problem or even insinuate that I'm solving a problem.

in response to me saying the below quote from their original comment won't work:

> If we can learn to work together on a bartering system again, the whole idea of money would go away and these people would have zero power. We give them the power. Why we do that? I do not know because we are dumb.

They're trying to pretend they're just offering observations after literally saying bartering is the solution to wealth inequality. I'm assuming they're some unhinged /r/iamverysmart teenager who has fully bought into the idea of anarcho-libertarianism as a realistic and legitimate political position held back by the brainwashed masses too stupid to realize they're being lead on by the evil capitalists.

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rylalu t1_jed2kty wrote

People just see that you think they are being led like sheep and get defensive.

A little civil discourse goes a long way at attempting to teach the people about complicated concepts like these.

Although you may say things a little straight forward I believe it's from the heart and that matters alot. I also totally agree with most of what you say about opting out of the US currency which has been an actual approach at strangling the power of government during the colonial Era which had some long lasting effects.

I want to read David Graebers 5000 years of debt. Talks about the archeological history of money and the creation of the concept of debt. Last book he wrote before he suddenly died after he landed in Italy.

Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Fucking pissed about this shit also.

Stay cool 😎

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Zogfrog t1_jeaxers wrote

Wtf did I just read ? Is this a parody ?

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Specter54 t1_jeb2lzc wrote

Reads like an I'm thirteen and this is deep parody.

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rylalu t1_jed1amd wrote

I can see this is pretty unpopular but there are elements of the upper elite who believe through generations of education they are ascending into a new breed of super human.

Not kidding either, I have heard billionaires talk about this over there freaking fancy Select sandwiches and ice cold bottled Perrier I was delivering them during board meeting lunches. Or there collection of 28 small production batch sports cars.

Even Obama insinuated something like this. In his A&E biography special, he didn't believe in automatic voter registration, as the majority of the population was not educated enough to make decisions on how to govern the country he said.

Talking about a system of righteous meritocracy where only the most educated and steadfast should and would be able to vote agreeing with a hearty republic of scholars rather than direct voting was preferential, even necessary to maintain America's world dominance. Essentially alluding that campaign finance laws benefitted the country because it kept Joe Shmoe from being a congress member.

Congress is supposed to be average members of society so that the law reflects each states group of constituents.

I supported Obama and even campaigned for him and when is saw his A&E biography my heart just sank because if I had known that's how he felt about me I would never have supported him.

It may sound crazy but there are definitely truths in your philosophical take on how we are being controlled. At least from the investor class people I have met. Also a Google board member called me a peasant during a walkthrough of our company a few years back where they were considering investing.

"Let us not talk about business in front of the peasants please".

In a room full of PHd research scientists and engineers....

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I_Bin_Painting t1_jedshwt wrote

> What is money backed in.

Economic output and the threat of violence.

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