34

Capitalism is obviously destroyed but I read very little on "money".

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] RoboGroMo@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago

I think about this a lot it's an interesting one, the current system of money is kinda crazy but the principle of having a token that can be used in trades is great.

Like @keepthepace said I can see it's significance diminish but not entirely vanish, if I want you to come and do the colour scheme for my living room then it's taking time from your life which i'd like to repay you but you might not need anything i know how to do -however personC might want something i can do and be able to do something you need - rather than having to work out every trade and find the people to agree we just use a token, that token is money.

The problem comes when you need that token to live and they're all in the hands of a greedy group of crazy people obsessed with having the most tokens - maybe we actually need more types of money not less, like maybe we should get land tokens that allow us to trade land but everyone gets a set amount and you can't just buy a thousand acres because your great-grandfather sold opium... Maybe even two types of money to buy food, a basic ration that affords for a complete and healthy diet of your choice plus a surplus coin which is earned by supplying the economy with foods or materials required (e.g. if you grow apples and supply them to the community pool you get 1 surplus token per kg but strawberries you get 1.3 st per kg due to local demand) these tokens can then only be spent on luxuries, rare items, and non-essential services.

I'm certainly not saying that's the system i propose or support simply that there's a lot more options and possibilities than we normally consider - maybe one land token gets you a small beach-front property or a huge bit of old farmland to restore, that gives everyone personal choice and helps manage demand with all sorts of interesting challenges - if you move onto a ruined plot of land and make it beautiful then you deserve more tokens than it cost you to get there but that opens of the possibility of someone purposely getting a rough bit of land, paying others to work on it using their excess surplus tokens then claiming the extra land tokens for themselves... and is that a bad thing or a good thing?

Thinking about things in obscure ways can really help to crystallise the interesting and important parts of something we're so used to thinking of in everyday terms, like what really is money and what is money supposed to be.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 1 year ago

Perhaps the solution is a credit system that can be traded for goods and services, but can't be invested. There's no stock market, only goods and services in your community.

I'm generally in favor of Market Socialism as a medium term, achievable goal. Workers own the company and all profits go either to them or to expand the company as a whole. They still compete with other worker-owned cooperatives in the market. It wouldn't solve all the problems, but it'd be a whole lot better than the system we have. Probably won't be the final form of humanity, though.

[-] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

Interesting. Would love to invest my time and energy into this idea as a solution

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
34 points (85.4% liked)

Solarpunk

5393 readers
2 users here now

The space to discuss Solarpunk itself and Solarpunk related stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.

What is Solarpunk?

Join our chat: Movim or XMPP client.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS