Mon, Dec 20, 2010 Permanent linkIt is not really that sort of book, it's a work of fiction, based on some extremist points of view, but I definitely hear what you're saying and it will be important for me to strap those points of view to seemingly believable characters. For that purpose the personal examination of relevant examples in correlation to the 'revolutionary text' will be useful to convince readers of their understanding and allegiances.
I guess the essence of my thought pattern was with you - on its own money is just a tool - it has been used in a manner that favors the accumulation of wealth. If the systems built on top of it were not profitable to the humans involved but only in terms of money then they fall down. The problem is that currently so much of this stupid tool is in the hands of just a few people, who given that fact can convince or enslave a much larger group of people to keep in line with their continued accumulation of wealth. By whatever system it is that they have created to do so.
The POV of the essay's author is to burn everything down and see what remains, what rebuilds itself.
So if we think about something as basic as electricity for the people. Something 'everyone' needs. Why isn't it free for all of us?
Wed, Dec 22, 2010 Permanent linkHere's an idea for the book that will let you make your point most efficiently and interestingly. There are 2 groups that each have something the other needs to survive. 1 group is us, doing almost everything as a result of money. The other has never had anything like money in their society, not in a communist way where government controls what money would have controlled, but in a peer-to-peer way instead of a hierarchy way of organizing society (That's what I expect our society to become, but we need people like you to write books and do other things to make it happen). Each group has lived that way for as long as they can remember and on average has no desire to change to the opposite (money or no money). The correct trade is obvious, an equal amount of each thing from each group goes to the other, and each gets what they need to survive. But in negotiating the details of the trade, that simple thing becomes extremely complicated. Some in each group decided they like the other way better, and each group changes toward its opposite some, which goes the wrong way as fast changes in society usually do. Insane things continue to happen on each side. Protesting on the streets. Burning piles of money. Using toilet paper as a new form of money when there was none to start with. Maybe a war starts. All from the different ways of organizing society interfering with what should have been a simple trade between the 2 groups. To make your point, write about what happens when some of the members of both groups leave and create a combined society together, with parts from each. Shortly after that gets going and is working well, write a little about how the original 2 groups (not including the new group made of some of each) continue to get worse and work toward their own destruction as a result of being closed minded and staying with how things were always done. Then maybe the new group finds the solution to those problems. Or it could end with them destroying each other just after it appears the problems are starting to be solved.
Do you think that would be a good way to explain the problems with money etc?
Wed, Dec 22, 2010 Permanent linkThat is an interesting way to approach the topic, what you have presented is another book in its own right. Or several. I might use it as an allegory, part of a discussion between a couple of characters, in fact I've got the scene that I could integrate it to. Called, "Jane speaks with the Tea Master" Frankly I've been a little unfair with you and the rest of the community, most of the book already exists within my head, I'm just trying to finish my first one before I get started committing it to paper. The basis is an essay or set thereof, presenting all the problems, solutions, and existential musings of our current world and individual predicaments (obviously with a high degree of ambiguity). This appears in quotes usually at the beginning of sections and chapters, when characters will behave in a way somewhat related to the proceeding philosophical wank. Coupled with plenty of sparsely interacting characters it is a tried and tested format, where I attempt to show off both the genius and utter fallacies of such thought from different perspectives, then let the audience make up their own mind.
Thanks a bunch dude :)
Are you confusing money with the things built on top of that system? Most of those problems would be solved by getting rid of the Intellectual Property system (patents, copyrights, etc). That's how they control the infrastructure. They patent the ways its built and its parts, so when a group of people has a problem that they could solve with a factory, for example, they're not allowed to build it without permission from someone who cares more about getting their money than if they die or not from not having the factory to solve their problems. For example, there are lots of vaccines that could be made in such factories.
I agree money is a badly designed system, but there are much worse systems built on top of it which could be ended separately. After ending those systems, we could see if money is worth keeping or not.
Also, you would be more convincing by listing examples of things that work well without money. Wikipedia is (I read) the 5th most popular website and is funded only by donations and people who write on it for free. Open-source software is now around equally advanced as software made by businesses with ways to control how you use it and to regulate it based on your payments. Some open-source licenses make it practical to sell to businesses who build software with it and give it to everyone else for free, so 99% of everyone gets it for free and 1% pays, the 1% that is making the most money from it. Most open-source software is not connected to money in any way. It exists because someone wanted their computer to do that.
If you want to get rid of the money system, include in your book the detailed patterns of things that work without money, why they started, what keeps them going and getting bigger, and what we can do to continue that pattern.