If we didn't revolve around money...

Discostuy

If society/gov/people/countries didn't do things based on the monetary factor what cool things do you think we'd see around us today?.

Like for example, if NASA or whoever wasn't restricted by money and funding, would we have colonised Mars or be harvesting meteors for minerals?

Would our reliance on oil and coal have dwindled if we could just build better natural resource power plants with no expense spared?

Would robots be making us breakfast if instead of the electronics like the iPad being produced for a profit, the research and development was aimed soley at advancing society?

Or would everything fall apart

mathie

Watch Zeitgeist Addendum

I think we'd have all sorts of cool things and solutions to lots of problems.

Roads and paths that didn't ice over.
Cars that didn't crash.
Undergound bullet trains going over 1000mph
Robots that did menial tasks.

Seachmall

Well we wouldn't be working 9 to 5s.

We wouldn't be stressing over bills or debt.

We'd spend most of our time with friends or family.

We'd spend some of it taking care of crops or live stock.

And we'd probably be happier.

thebigbiffo

unfortunatey there'd be no motivation for anybody to develop anything new so all the above would never happen.

ei.sdraob

mathie wrote: »

Watch Zeitgeist Addendum

How about you and the OP invest in a history book of the 20th century and read up on various communist experiments. Zeitgeist repackages the same old communist sales pitch under a newer contemporary neo-communist package.

If only people read and learned from history

Seachmall

thebigbiffo wrote: »

unfortunatey there'd be no motivation for anybody to develop anything new so all the above would never happen.

Most of science and technology wasn't developed for profit. The fundamentals were developed by curious and intelligent people for the sake of it.

Profit is obviously a huge factor in developing technology nowadays, and they need that expectation to justify huge investments in projects but we'd probably have the basics. Presumably society would make further advances but much slower I'd imagine.

Sky King

Like for example, if NASA or whoever wasn't restricted by money and funding, would we have colonised Mars or be harvesting meteors for minerals?

God, NASA was anything but restricted by funding during the 20th century.

In today's money the apollo program cost the american taxpayer about one hundred billion dollars - and that was to send a handful of guys to walk around a dusty airless rock for no real reason, which in terms of space, is bascially right beside us.

Think of what else could have been achieved with that money!

FTGFOP

Linux dishwashers.

ei.sdraob

Seachmall wrote: »

Presumably society would make further advances but much slower I'd imagine.

Like I said in thread, we already have various historical experiments in communism during the 20th century
On one side of the Iron curtain we ended up with Lada's on the other with BMWs
enough said...

Chuck Stone

You would still need to put time, energy and resources into doing these projects.

It takes labour, effort, energy and equipment to carry out these projects so how would that be purchased?

The best way to purchase these things would be to give IUO's of a pre determined value - say a 20 unit IOU was worth a fraction of a piece of a precious metal.. oh like say gold or something. Then those IOU's could be exchanged for goods and services..

wait...

Discostuy

ei.sdraob wrote: »

How about you and the OP invest in a history book of the 20th century and read up on various communist experiments. Zeitgeist repackages the same old communist sales pitch under a newer contemporary neo-communist package.

If only people read and learned from history

I wasn't really trying to get into the whole "happy go lucky commie village" agenda...more just curious to hear what advances are on the horizon, that people think we could see today, if money didn't dictate/restrict

mawk

if money was no object, Id revolve around fulcrums.

thebigbiffo

Seachmall wrote: »

Most of science and technology wasn't developed for profit. The fundamentals were developed by curious and intelligent people for the sake of it.

Profit is obviously a huge factor in developing technology nowadays, and they need that expectation to justify huge investments in projects but we'd probably have the basics. Presumably society would make further advances but much slower I'd imagine.

simply put - i completely disagree. in the vast majority of cases development took place for personal advantage or at the very least the technology/utilities that came from that development was created for profit.

ei.sdraob

Discostuy wrote: »

I wasn't really trying to get into the whole "happy go lucky commie village" agenda...more just curious to hear what advances are on the horizon, that people think we could see today

This "what if" question has been experimented on already, maybe you could ask someone from Cuba or North Korea for an answer thats if they can somehow access this advancement called the internets...

Discostuy wrote: »

if money didn't dictate/restrict

Says who? How?

You produce goods/services that are beneficial to the economy and in return you get money which you spend in the economy on goods/services provided by others, its not a difficult concept, this very forum (and the computer + net connection you are using) depends on it.

Seachmall

Chuck Stone wrote: »

You would still need to put time, energy and resources into doing these projects.

It takes labour, effort, energy and equipment to carry out these projects so how would that be purchased?

The science and technology fields are full of people willing to do stuff for free because they're passionate about it.

We'd advance much slower but we'd still advance. Not that we need to continually advance our technology to be happy.

thebigbiffo wrote:

simply put - i completely disagree. in the vast majority of cases development took place for personal advantage or at the very least the technology/utilities that came from that development was created for profit.

In the majority of cases people who make advances or work in these industries wouldn't simply stop because they're no longer receiving a pay cheque.

Chuck Stone

Seachmall wrote: »

The science and technology fields are full of people willing to do stuff for free because they're passionate about it.

Yes but they still need to eat and heat their homes and travel etc.

Rented Mule

Sky King wrote: »

God, NASA was anything but restricted by funding during the 20th century.

In today's money the apollo program cost the american taxpayer about one hundred billion dollars - and that was to send a handful of guys to walk around a dusty airless rock for no real reason, which in terms of space, is bascially right beside us.

Think of what else could have been achieved with that money!

Invade Saudi Arabia ?

Cianos

Money is in many ways an abstract notion. The same wants, desires greed and jealousy would still be there, there'd just be other methods of 'keeping score'. Money is probably of more benefit to the weaker in society, because it's a totally transparent way of 'keeping score'.