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

[Giovanni Santostasi]

What about Star Trek society? Read this for example

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/lessons-from-star-trek/


Giovanni

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
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