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

[Kelly Anderson]

2011/11/12 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
> On 11 November 2011 21:55, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Money evolved quite a lot along history, as shown for instance by Money as Debt, as well as those in control thereof and its social function. I am not sure that some kind of "money", probably in the form of accounting units records, should not be maintained, and in fact it was even during the most radical socialist experiments, but this leaves open to debate most significant issues affecting it.

You may have noticed my user name... KellyCoinGuy... In another life,
I am Life Member 5228 of the American Numismatic
Association...(www.ana.org) A coin collector, a numismatist. Part of
being a numismatist is studying the history of money. So I have
probably studied more about the history of money than most people out
there... However, that doesn't mean I'm an expert at economics.

My favorite book on the history of money is "Frozen Desire: The
Meaning of Money" by James Buchan. It is a great read, very well
written and it goes through a lot of the history of money in all its
forms.

I can't imagine a world without money. Once the concept is invented,
it's just real hard for it to go away...

> Ownership is an altogether different issue. The members of the ruling
>class in Sparta, eg, had no personal ownership whatsoever (contrary to
>lower classes).

Wasn't this because the ruling class in Sparta were warriors? And
weren't they due a living by the rest of society? So, in effect, they
owned whatever they needed... whenever they needed it... right? They
were the elites. Of course Spartans were weird by modern standards, so
this may not have meant much to them.

>Yet, they certainly did not share all they had with anybody, and had a
>rather strong sense of their individuality - eg, they were certainly not
>unconcerned by things such as personal honor or ambition.

Personal honor was the MOST important thing in Sparta. At least among
the ruling warrior caste.

I can see small corners and pockets where things like open source can
make money irrelevant in a very limited context... but without money
in the overall system, little corners like this just can't exist for
very long, IMHO.

Even the Spartan warriors could not exist without the money that was
exchanged by the underclasses.

-Kelly