| johnlucas said:
Money is the Universal Trading Piece. No two ears are exactly the same. No two sheep are exactly the same. Weights, heights, quality, you name it. So humankind found a bunch of mostly useless rarish metals & said this will be the stand-in for the trading exchange. Later we said some artistic papers would represent this middleman. Same difference. Worthless shit that is only valuable because WE SAY it is. Fiat. Not valuable because of its inherent function to the human design. Like air, water, food, shelter, sun, belonging & affection. |
Sort of ...
The most primitive form of economy is the barter system. The problem with the barter system is that trade can only happen when both individuals produce goods or services that the other individual needs. Money is an abstraction over what people produce as a way of ensuring that individuals can trade without needing to have opposing needs. The value of the money is strictly a preceived value, and one individual agrees upon a trade based on what they believe they can purchase from others using a similar value.
| johnlucas said:
We have more technology in the world than ever before. All of our invention is to make life easier so we would have to be LESS productive. Yet we work harder than ever before & for less return for those labors. Industrial revolution was supposed to make life easier. But all it did was add more work. And not even work that produces things of usable value. A farmer who labors on his field will have plenty of food of HIS OWN to eat like my great-grandparents did in the Great Depression days. Work in places nowadays & your labors only help your business owner eat better. And what you produce isn't even your own! |
I'll give you a paper ledger and I'll give an accountant a computer with state of the art accounting software and we will see who completes a company's pay roll faster. Today we have automated sales systems and online retailers which drastically reduce the staff retailers need to make sales. Technology is constantly increasing productivity, if you can't see that you're not looking ...
| johnlucas said:
Money is a game. And Supply & Demand is a strategy. By merit the most important jobs are those who prepare the food & water, those who clean the filth that rots & causes disease. Yep your hunters, farmers, well-diggers, & janitors. However people called hedgefund managers get obscene wealth for money speculation. Kim Kardashian gets millions just for having a "reality" show. Teaching is another crucial profession by merit yet many teachers just get by on their incomes. Doctors/surgeons get paid pretty good but in reality they should be paid even better for alleviating & eradicating diseases & other possibly fatal malfunctions to the human body. Kim Kardashian ain't productive like those doctors, surgeons, teachers, janitors, farmers, hunters, & well-diggers. Neither are those hedgefund managers. They don't produce nothing of substantial value. Yet they get lots of those "physical representations of production" within an economy. It's not based in reality & the essential needs of the human species. It's based on the human folly of "The Market" & how well those products are marketed. |
You're mixing multiple concepts here ...
A person's income is not based on their productivity, it is based on other people trading their productivity on a good or service that they produce. If I'm willing to exchange the equlivalent of 2 hours of my labour in wages to another individual then they have (indirectly) earned 2 hours of my productivity.
| johnlucas said:
The First World built its wealth off of the Third World. The "Third World" is poor because the "First World" exploited those people & their resources. |
This is (just about) the most moronic and misinformed comment I have ever read ...
If you look at the poor throughout the third world they're looking to be "exploited" because it comes with dramatically higher standards of living, much better health, and much longer lives. People are flocking out of their "wonderful" undeveloped country-sides into cramped cities to take (by our standards) low paying jobs because of how much wealthier they will become.
In the absence of your "robber barrons" these people face a short life full of misery and hardship ... but at least the raw minerals they have in the ground will remain there even though these countries have no use for them and they are (essentially) valueless to these people.
