What is The Free World Charter?

Monetary systems are more engrained in the human psyche than you imagine. When resources are finite there will always be value placed upon them.

Energy is one of our most basic resources, there is a limit to how much of it we can exploit, yet our potential uses for it are limitless. If energy is completely free what's to stop one person using more than their fair share or even monopolising it? You would have to come up with a system to equally distribute the energy. Now some processes are more energy intensive than others so you would have to plan where the energy goes so it's put to best use. What you inevitably end up with is a centrally planned economy alla communism. As history has taught us centrally planned economies inevitably lead to massive inefficiencies. To counteract these inefficiencies you will inevitably see the development of a black market where energy is traded and your back to using a form of monetary system.

You can not remove currency from an economy, the two are inseparable.

The funniest thing about this is that by advocating getting rid of money as the answer to all of humanity's problems, it is actually elevating money to a status above even that which it has in our current system.

Wolves, elephants, lions, monkeys don't have money, but they have a hierarchy. I have three cats - there is even a hierarchy at work between them. The weak suffer, the strong prevail. Take this genetic imperative of the survival of the fittest and the superiority of the strong, mix it with herd mentality and add a good pinch of human nature along with it's messy emotions and pesky individualism - stir that pot and even in the absence of money what emerges is not some beatific peace where everyone lives in harmony and equality, but an ugly scene of brutality and chaos.

As for the bit about there suddenly being no such thing as hard labour - words fail me.

silkfield wrote: »

I don't agree, but if so, so?

By assuming that the elimination of money would inevitably and permanently change human nature for the better.

silkfield wrote: »

Or the last time you walked home with a bag of coal on a wheelbarrow?

Well, since you ask, as it happens...... we provide all of our own winter fuel by dint of our own labour.

Last summer, as we always do, we went to a bog and turned turf that had been cut on our behalf by machine (it was allowed, don't get upset about that. Though I'm a bit upset we won't be able to do it for much longer.) When it had dried, we moved it to a trailer, drove it home, took it (in wheelbarrows as it happens) to the back garden and stacked it. This required 8+ trips and each unloading took about 30-40 trips with the wheelbarrow. Staking it is a bit of a job too. We also delivered several other trailer loads to other people and assisted them with unloading/stacking.

We also cut down two very large trees, one of which was dead, the other was undermining a house foundation. We generally get a couple of people every year who need a tree or a few trees cut down, in return for which we take the wood (usually leaving them a good pile too if they want it). These were then cut into manageable size, though pretty large, logs and again taken home and stacked. We didn't need it all, so again some was taken to other's houses. And once again all this moving of wood was largely accomplished using..... wheelbarrows and good old manual labour.

Now every week we spend an hour or two cutting these logs into small enough pieces to burn for the following week. And of course every day we have to bring in the day's supply of fuel. It proves the old adage that 'the man who cuts his own wood warms himself twice' - though I'd extend that to 4 or more times.

It was all pretty hard labour, though not unenjoyable, as there is satisfaction in labour sometimes. I have no heating costs at all and live in a very warm house - that is certainly satisfying, but it is labour that replaces the need for money.

Granted, we are not forced to do this. It's what we do, and I like to think its not bad for our son to experience from himself that there IS labour involved in production and there is reward for effort.

But talk to any farmer - mechanisation or not there is labour involved there still. And show me the house built entirely by machine and not manual labour. I've worked in a meat factory - let me tell you you'd be physically exhausted at the end of your shift there.

And that's in a first world country with existing infrastructure (much of it built by dint of physical labour).

And before you say that in the absence of money I would still do all this happily - so it proves your point, well no, I would not. Why would I bother when I could have my heating free anyway? Why would I want to teach my son that labour brings rewards, when really it would not?

silkfield wrote: »

You claimed that we don't live well, and then used the fact that 10 people a week kill themselves. You were making a generalisation from specifics. The claim that the tragedy of suicides indicates that we, as a society, don't live well, is contradicted by the fact that suicide is so rare.

Sounds more believable/likely than libertarianism at least.