[ExI] Money and Human Nature (was Re: Capitalism, anti capitalism, emotional arousal)

[Kelly Anderson]

2011/11/11 Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com>:
> 2011/11/11 Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
>>
>> Then money is the problem.

Money is merely a tool that frees us from the burden of finding barter
partners. If you want to go all the way to a system where nobody owns
anything, we can discuss that. Some island systems in Tonga and Tahiti
as well as some hunter gatherer cultures allegedly got past ownership,
and simply shared all they had.

This is the partial goal of some in the open source movement, as well
as wikileaks and other parts of cyber space. You can't really
effectively get rid of money without also getting rid of the concept
of ownership.

Now, if you get rid of the concept of ownership... you have to go all
the way, and this eventually means that you cannot claim ownership of
the sub-strait that you use to compute. That is currently your brain.
Some day, it may be a different medium, and you can't own that either.

A true and full form of collectivism, where we become the Borg, where
we lose all individuality and ego is the only alternative to money
that really makes any sense.

I get the idea that most of the people on this list are fierce
individualists, and want to remain as individuals. So I don't think,
in the end, many of the list members will go along with "let's get rid
of money"...

On the other hand, you could probably find a lot of people who would
go along with let's get rid of the federal reserve, or let's get rid
of fractionalized banking... or other aspects of our financial
systems. But that is not money. Money is a much more primitive beast
than that.

> I think human nature is the problem.

Here Dave is clearly onto something... :-)  But how much of our human
nature do we really want to give up? Are we really better off without
anger? Are we better off without jealousy? Could we throw out
religion? Get rid of the concept that other people somehow "belong" to
us (as in a "committed" relationship)? What do we want to lose in
order to gain the most. And what is most important to gain?

Just adding more intelligence without any other adjustments seems to
be a rather limiting choice... likely to lead to a really bad outcome.
But is altruism the answer? Is compassion the answer? More empathy?
Love?

These are not easy questions, and I don't expect glib answers that
will solve the real problems this kind of thing brings up.

-Kelly