doomcanoe

I can’t tell if you’re trolling, arguing in bad faith, or just not reading carefully.

I never said I “hate the guy with the capital,” nor did I claim money “doesn’t do anything.” Its role in organizing labor and distributing resources is obvious.

What I said is that money isn’t essential. In your canal example, what’s actually required are laborers, food, and tools. Incentives can be monetary, collective need, shared access to resources, the sheer fun of it, or even coercion (though that last one is obviously undesirable).

The point stands: a canal, or a phone, can be built through many incentive systems that don’t rely on capital. What other element can be removed before the outcome is no longer the same?

p.s. You were not being ironic. You were being hyperbolic.

Sure, but like I alread said, money isn’t inherently bad. It has served as a practical answer to the inefficiencies of pure barter. It streamlined exchange, reduced friction, and in many cases distributed power more evenly than a sprawling barter web ever could. In that sense, money was a clever and fair solution for its time.

But whether or not money has created new problems, whether it’s outlived its usefulness, or whether a better system would come from reform or replacement, all of that is a separate debate. The central point remains: money is not essential to creation.

Building a phone requires knowledge, resources, labor, and coordination. Remove any of those and the phone can’t exist. Remove money, and the process still goes on, it may look different in how people access or exchange those inputs, but the act of creation itself doesn’t depend on capital. That’s the key distinction: the difference between a finished phone and someone tinkering with sticks isn’t money, it’s the tangible elements of production.

Oh, hello again, mind keeping your responses to my comments under one thread? It’s inconvenient to jump around like this.

So the workers will work unpaid?

Obviously, in a capitalist system, a worker without the means to cover their needs won’t work without pay. But that only shows that pay is a mechanism of this system, not the goal itself. If another economic structure were in place, people would act according to the incentives and access points that system provided to meet their needs and wants.

We can already see this in practice today: retirees, hobbyists, and people with spare time often volunteer, create, or collaborate in groups for reasons that have nothing to do with money. Their motivation comes from purpose, community, or fulfillment. Proof that creation does not require capital to exist, only a framework that connects effort with meeting human needs.

That’s quite a leap. The wealthy aren’t some separate species with different desires, they want the same fundamental things as everyone else. I never implied anything about “the rich”, and regardless my point isn’t about them. It’s that capital itself is non-essential.

Yes, there’s a bigger discussion to be had about human nature, whether people create out of an inherent drive or simply to secure comfort, and how different incentive systems shape that. But none of those discussions lead to the conclusion that a capital-based economy is the only system in which people would create.

I’m not saying that capital, as a universal equivalent or barter substitute, is inherently a bad solution to the problem of trade. What I am saying is that capital is not inherently essential. It’s an imagined system, useful yes, but replaceable in countless ways.

Think about it: Sure, I wouldn’t want more washers than I have use for, but I don’t inherently want money either. What I want are the things money represents. If money disappeared tomorrow and some other proxy system took its place, I’d want that instead.

And when it comes to creation, say building a phone for example, money contributes nothing to the actual process. You need materials, knowledge, labor, and coordination. The only truly non-essential element is money. It’s as you said, simply a replacement for bartering.

If you disagree with my actual point, I’d love to hear the argument. But I can’t keep arguing with your point that we “need the Matrix in order to live in the Matrix”, or “money in order to live in capitalism”.

You:

People want to be paid for their labor

Me:

capital does “play a role”, at least insofar as incentive predicated on people’s ability to function in the capitalistic society we currently inhabit goes

How awkward, you must have missed me making that exact point…

So sure, people want to be paid. But let’s be clear: they don’t inherently want money, they want to survive, create, and ideally thrive in the society they inhabit. Capital is just the tool we happen to use right now, it’s not essential to the concept of creation.

People created long before money existed, and they still create today without a paycheck attached. Remove capital from the picture, and as long as the work has value to those involved, it still gets made.

The real kicker? Capital often corrupts the process, pushing people to maximize profit instead of maximizing quality or true value.

The only thing you can remove from the process and still get the same result is capital…

And while I get that capital does “play a role”, at least insofar as incentive predicated on people’s ability to function in the capitalistic society we currently inhabit goes, to imply that somehow without it people would be left to trying to “design a phone out of sticks on the ground” is extremely disingenuous.

“She’s built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro”
-Zapp Brannigan

Obviously the current polarity wasn’t working, what else can ya do?

no

thanks for coming to my Ted talk

Fun fact.

You can do it anyway!

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator