NO, evil is the root of all money...See Peter Lamborn Wilson on money, including in The New Nihilism. Also, there are two communisms. One from Karl Marx observing that with the Industrial Revolution came the catastrophic loss of the commons with self-sufficient country folk moved into poverty in toxic cities, forcing children into child labor in the mills that William Blake called "these dark Satanic mills." Marx wanted something very simple -- that the workers own the means of production. Which brings us to the second communism where evil human beings like Lenin and Stalin took over no matter what the system's name. Finally, your friend who breezily dismisses government as not being evil but rather it's the people who run the government -- that's obvious. By using the term government, we mean those people. Which however leaves unsaid the anarchist vision of a world without governments, without laws, without the whip
Thank you for your nice post and the idea to have a discussion between your own and one of your reader's points of view !!
Money isn't everything, but without money everything is nothing ...
Humanity's transition from an intrinsic egalitarian, highly independent, fully self-reliable/-responsible hunter-gatherer society encompassing only hundreds of individuals to highly complex, fully interdependent, highly stratified mass-societies with division of labor that led to loss of any individual sense of responsibility for the whole or reliability for himself may turn our kin's worst mistake ...
Money, whatever shape (even booze, matches or shaving-blades) has its time in history and circumstances. It should serve as a means to avoid direct bartering only. Whoever gets to worshipping it (by holding or craving for it without creating added-value) is definitively mentally sick.
Money like technology is "not" good or evil, as its an inanimate object. The most nefarious things in every culture are not the artifacts, but their implementation by dubious two legged living organisms.😁
I read that money is a claim on energy. I used to think it was a token of labour, but the energy idea makes more sense. Tim Watkins' blog has some ideas on this.
Government has to be despotic because it is a subset of people making decisions for the rest. The population is too big for everyone to know each other and reach consensus, so to keep things cohesive those who disagree will be forced to act in the interest of social order. Then, as in representative democracy, those who get power need to convince or engineer consent so it is geared towards charismatic or powerful people, who tend to be sociopaths and narcissists, who then rewrite the rules to entrench power when they can.
As much as I am for anarchism, if the grounds for it to function are not present, it won't happen. Equal access to resources and the inability to dominate is needed, which means the inability to have stored energy (food) or sedentism (villages, etc). Luckily, this is our future is the climate flips from the holocene into something like what went before. Hooray.
...or you could have a civilisation based on complex technology where women are just as "valued" as men because robots do all the hard work and everyone is just a meat cog under a totalitarian panopticon AI, as E M Forster wrote back in the day.
That's an awful lot of work you've put in front of me:) Don't know if I'll have time to address every point before your readers move on, but I'll try. First let me clear up some points:
"I like him for multiple reasons. He combines extreme intelligence with skepticism, erudition and worldliness. He is clearly well-read, but his perspective is clearly derived from his own experience."
Is there some other experience I could derive my perspective from? I do try to put myself in the other person's shoes, but ultimately our own experiences are going to be determinant. How is it possible to avoid that? Books are collections of other people's experiences, and I've read a fair number over the years, but if something written changes my perspective, it's still ME that's making the change, because I have to evaluate what I've read based on what I already know, or can find out under my own steam. I would ask that the reader consider the question: What perspective, or change of perspective, in your own life hasn't been the result of reflection based on your own experiences?
Erudition? "Rudition' might be a better description because I'm sometimes rude, for which I humbly apologize.
"From what I’ve pieced together, he’s lived all around the world, and absorbed many different cultural perspectives. Clearly, he is a student of life."
Travelled the world, but only lived in the UK, Canada and Spain. Very interested in other cultures, and languages. Speak Spanish fluently, passable French and Japanese, also have studied Punjabi Mandarin and Russian, but no claim to competency in the last three.
"I also like him because he challenges me constantly from ideological positions that I have never encountered IRL.
For instance, he’s been known to defend the much-reviled economic theory of Thomas Malthus. I’ve never met a Malthusian in the wild. Have you?"
If I recall correctly (too lazy to go back and look) I said that Malthus was correct for the time in which he lived (1766 – 1834). What he couldn't have predicted is the effect of the industrial revolution on food production, human labour and social organization. Mechanization of agriculture didn't get started until 1868 with the introduction of the first steam tractor, and it was several decades before that became the dominate aspect in tillage, planting and harvesting, along with other factors such as crop rotation, inter-cropping, chemical fertilizers and insecticides.
All these developments had a huge impact on food production, labour migration (to the industrial centres) trade, and education (to run the more complex economy) just to name a few. One of the effects of the industrial revolution was a reduction in birth rates at a time of soaring food production. Every western nation experienced a decline in births to the point where all of them now have birth rates below replacement levels. Grain went from a domestic consumable to a major export item, with millions of tons being shipped to less developed nations, who eventually underwent their own 'green revolutions' with similar effects on population.
How could Malthus have predicted any of that? It's worth noting that just as he was limited by his own perception of what was possible given the technology of his time, so are we limited by our perception of what's possible given current technological levels. I would argue that we're on the verge of another technological revolution that very few can perceive at this moment.
At the risk of drifting off topic, take a look at this picture. Ever seen anything like it?
Not only is huge demand for copper wire a thing of the past, modern cellular networks mean that even the poorest African nation now has complete telephone coverage because they don't have to build that kind of network. Same applies to nuclear technology which is going small-scale and modular, which will eliminate the massive investment needed for large-scale plants, and transmission networks.
Here's a comical look at that possible future from Tatarstan, a major industrial centre of the USSR....er... Russia. Song's called, I'm not a collective farm girl. Take it away, Leina!
I'll just add that it's never a good idea to take yourself too seriously because you can never tell what's around the next corner. Malthus couldn't, and like him, we could be perfectly correct in our predictions based on current knowledge, but still way off the mark when it comes to the future. One more point. I'm a skeptic, not a cynic. An optimist, not a nihilist. Even if it all seems hopeless I'll still keep plowing away, preferably with a modern tractor, but I'll use a horse if I have to.
"The reason that I’m writing this is because we’ve recently gotten into quite an interesting discussion about human nature, morality, and economics.
Ebear likes to challenge me on my anarchism, which he sees as naive."
I wouldn't say naive. It's obviously a well developed ideology, which is my main point: that it IS an ideology, and as such suffers the same limitations as other ideologies such as Communism, Capitalism, Democracy, Monarchy and so forth. To one degree or another they all neglect the human factor, which is oriented towards self-serving short-term goals. It's a natural bias of all living creatures. How you address that is my main concern. I don't have the answer, but how can you make any progress if you don't ask the right questions? The founders (USA) understood that at a political level and tried to create institutions that would act as checks and balances on aberrant political behaviour. I would argue we need something similar at the psychological level that acts as a brake on psychopathy and anti-social behaviour in general. They understood this in the USSR, but they went about it the wrong way, which only alienated people and drove cynicism to an extreme.
There's a passage in one of my favourite books, the Tao Te Ching, which captures this exactly.
The Way of Subtle Influence
Superior leaders are those whose existence is merely known;
Another thought: is there a difference between use and purpose?
You can use money for making lives better, but is it's purpose this? What happens when it is used?
Money simplifies social obligations: you pay someone for something and this ends the obligation. In effect you are saying that you don't care any more.
It represents anything that can have a value, be it a potato or a unique work of art, making all things trivial. It abolishes that which is sacred.
If you take out a loan, you are in effect taking future energy (you pay back later) to convert a past process (making something, etc) into a present desire (a cool new kayak). Interest increases the amount of future energy needed beyond the worth of the present energy need. What happens if there is less energy in the future (get fired)?
The stuff is black magic, the very blackest. Down with money (unless I win the lottery)!
NO, evil is the root of all money...See Peter Lamborn Wilson on money, including in The New Nihilism. Also, there are two communisms. One from Karl Marx observing that with the Industrial Revolution came the catastrophic loss of the commons with self-sufficient country folk moved into poverty in toxic cities, forcing children into child labor in the mills that William Blake called "these dark Satanic mills." Marx wanted something very simple -- that the workers own the means of production. Which brings us to the second communism where evil human beings like Lenin and Stalin took over no matter what the system's name. Finally, your friend who breezily dismisses government as not being evil but rather it's the people who run the government -- that's obvious. By using the term government, we mean those people. Which however leaves unsaid the anarchist vision of a world without governments, without laws, without the whip
Thank you for your nice post and the idea to have a discussion between your own and one of your reader's points of view !!
Money isn't everything, but without money everything is nothing ...
Humanity's transition from an intrinsic egalitarian, highly independent, fully self-reliable/-responsible hunter-gatherer society encompassing only hundreds of individuals to highly complex, fully interdependent, highly stratified mass-societies with division of labor that led to loss of any individual sense of responsibility for the whole or reliability for himself may turn our kin's worst mistake ...
Money, whatever shape (even booze, matches or shaving-blades) has its time in history and circumstances. It should serve as a means to avoid direct bartering only. Whoever gets to worshipping it (by holding or craving for it without creating added-value) is definitively mentally sick.
Money like technology is "not" good or evil, as its an inanimate object. The most nefarious things in every culture are not the artifacts, but their implementation by dubious two legged living organisms.😁
I read that money is a claim on energy. I used to think it was a token of labour, but the energy idea makes more sense. Tim Watkins' blog has some ideas on this.
Government has to be despotic because it is a subset of people making decisions for the rest. The population is too big for everyone to know each other and reach consensus, so to keep things cohesive those who disagree will be forced to act in the interest of social order. Then, as in representative democracy, those who get power need to convince or engineer consent so it is geared towards charismatic or powerful people, who tend to be sociopaths and narcissists, who then rewrite the rules to entrench power when they can.
As much as I am for anarchism, if the grounds for it to function are not present, it won't happen. Equal access to resources and the inability to dominate is needed, which means the inability to have stored energy (food) or sedentism (villages, etc). Luckily, this is our future is the climate flips from the holocene into something like what went before. Hooray.
...or you could have a civilisation based on complex technology where women are just as "valued" as men because robots do all the hard work and everyone is just a meat cog under a totalitarian panopticon AI, as E M Forster wrote back in the day.
That's an awful lot of work you've put in front of me:) Don't know if I'll have time to address every point before your readers move on, but I'll try. First let me clear up some points:
"I like him for multiple reasons. He combines extreme intelligence with skepticism, erudition and worldliness. He is clearly well-read, but his perspective is clearly derived from his own experience."
Is there some other experience I could derive my perspective from? I do try to put myself in the other person's shoes, but ultimately our own experiences are going to be determinant. How is it possible to avoid that? Books are collections of other people's experiences, and I've read a fair number over the years, but if something written changes my perspective, it's still ME that's making the change, because I have to evaluate what I've read based on what I already know, or can find out under my own steam. I would ask that the reader consider the question: What perspective, or change of perspective, in your own life hasn't been the result of reflection based on your own experiences?
Erudition? "Rudition' might be a better description because I'm sometimes rude, for which I humbly apologize.
"From what I’ve pieced together, he’s lived all around the world, and absorbed many different cultural perspectives. Clearly, he is a student of life."
Travelled the world, but only lived in the UK, Canada and Spain. Very interested in other cultures, and languages. Speak Spanish fluently, passable French and Japanese, also have studied Punjabi Mandarin and Russian, but no claim to competency in the last three.
"I also like him because he challenges me constantly from ideological positions that I have never encountered IRL.
For instance, he’s been known to defend the much-reviled economic theory of Thomas Malthus. I’ve never met a Malthusian in the wild. Have you?"
If I recall correctly (too lazy to go back and look) I said that Malthus was correct for the time in which he lived (1766 – 1834). What he couldn't have predicted is the effect of the industrial revolution on food production, human labour and social organization. Mechanization of agriculture didn't get started until 1868 with the introduction of the first steam tractor, and it was several decades before that became the dominate aspect in tillage, planting and harvesting, along with other factors such as crop rotation, inter-cropping, chemical fertilizers and insecticides.
All these developments had a huge impact on food production, labour migration (to the industrial centres) trade, and education (to run the more complex economy) just to name a few. One of the effects of the industrial revolution was a reduction in birth rates at a time of soaring food production. Every western nation experienced a decline in births to the point where all of them now have birth rates below replacement levels. Grain went from a domestic consumable to a major export item, with millions of tons being shipped to less developed nations, who eventually underwent their own 'green revolutions' with similar effects on population.
How could Malthus have predicted any of that? It's worth noting that just as he was limited by his own perception of what was possible given the technology of his time, so are we limited by our perception of what's possible given current technological levels. I would argue that we're on the verge of another technological revolution that very few can perceive at this moment.
At the risk of drifting off topic, take a look at this picture. Ever seen anything like it?
http://www.s-hamilton.us/other/ComputerClub/TelephonePole2.jpg
Not only is huge demand for copper wire a thing of the past, modern cellular networks mean that even the poorest African nation now has complete telephone coverage because they don't have to build that kind of network. Same applies to nuclear technology which is going small-scale and modular, which will eliminate the massive investment needed for large-scale plants, and transmission networks.
Here's a comical look at that possible future from Tatarstan, a major industrial centre of the USSR....er... Russia. Song's called, I'm not a collective farm girl. Take it away, Leina!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iGQ4lbyz_Y
I'll just add that it's never a good idea to take yourself too seriously because you can never tell what's around the next corner. Malthus couldn't, and like him, we could be perfectly correct in our predictions based on current knowledge, but still way off the mark when it comes to the future. One more point. I'm a skeptic, not a cynic. An optimist, not a nihilist. Even if it all seems hopeless I'll still keep plowing away, preferably with a modern tractor, but I'll use a horse if I have to.
"The reason that I’m writing this is because we’ve recently gotten into quite an interesting discussion about human nature, morality, and economics.
Ebear likes to challenge me on my anarchism, which he sees as naive."
I wouldn't say naive. It's obviously a well developed ideology, which is my main point: that it IS an ideology, and as such suffers the same limitations as other ideologies such as Communism, Capitalism, Democracy, Monarchy and so forth. To one degree or another they all neglect the human factor, which is oriented towards self-serving short-term goals. It's a natural bias of all living creatures. How you address that is my main concern. I don't have the answer, but how can you make any progress if you don't ask the right questions? The founders (USA) understood that at a political level and tried to create institutions that would act as checks and balances on aberrant political behaviour. I would argue we need something similar at the psychological level that acts as a brake on psychopathy and anti-social behaviour in general. They understood this in the USSR, but they went about it the wrong way, which only alienated people and drove cynicism to an extreme.
There's a passage in one of my favourite books, the Tao Te Ching, which captures this exactly.
The Way of Subtle Influence
Superior leaders are those whose existence is merely known;
The next best are loved and honored;
The next are respected;
And the next are ridiculed.
Those who lack belief
Will not in turn be believed.
But when the command comes from afar
And the work is done, the goal achieved,
The people say, "We did it naturally."
It is not that money is evil; rather, it's that the love of money is evil; i.e., unbridled greed.
Another thought: is there a difference between use and purpose?
You can use money for making lives better, but is it's purpose this? What happens when it is used?
Money simplifies social obligations: you pay someone for something and this ends the obligation. In effect you are saying that you don't care any more.
It represents anything that can have a value, be it a potato or a unique work of art, making all things trivial. It abolishes that which is sacred.
If you take out a loan, you are in effect taking future energy (you pay back later) to convert a past process (making something, etc) into a present desire (a cool new kayak). Interest increases the amount of future energy needed beyond the worth of the present energy need. What happens if there is less energy in the future (get fired)?
The stuff is black magic, the very blackest. Down with money (unless I win the lottery)!