Future: Moneyless economy?
Replying to these posts from this topic i want to say something more about why i believe money-less economy envisioned in star trek is possible:
The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money does not exist in the 24th century. . . The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity."
-Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact
I hope this will be a great inspiration for a better future.
Thank you,
Andr�/quote]
monserrat wrote:
Yes, Libervisioners...
It would be nice if future was to be so easy to disclose...
I have thought about this moneyless society some time ago and even though it does sounds a bit hard to imagine, it makes every sense. Not that we will force money out of the system, it will simply become unneeded. And free software movement actually makes the first step to it.
How? Well, by fighting to free one popular form of information, software, but also promoting an ideology that very well applies to ALL forms of information aka knowledge. Ultimately, free software movement seeks to build a society where information as such is not being traded at all.. it leaves the economic system. And it should have been so from the beginning because information can't be traded by it's very nature. What can be traded are only it's carrying media (CD/DVD/server download etc.), but not the information itself.
And freeing the information like this is leading to even greater technological advancements making out entrance to the nanotechnology era even faster. But what is nanotechnology? It is an ability to change or build molecular structures by being able to see and manipulate them. In it's sofisticated and developed form it will make creating material matter out of thin air possible, just by dissaseminating the moleculs of air and putting them into different structure according to the molecular blueprints of such "computer" (in star trek called: replicator).
This gives material goods the same practical characteristics as information has thus making trading with it pointless. :-) Even though it wouldn't be unethical and impossible as with information, trading material goods will be unneccesery as everyone would already be able to create whatever they want anyway by using *information* stored in a replicator (molecular blueprints) which is free as in freedom for all.
Your thoughts?
Thanks
Daniel
Building this type of economy would require great progress in society and changing peoples views (not to say minds). Today most people in western world are caught in a spiderweb of capitalism, constantly in this work-buy-work-buy loop. They are being bombarded by "You need this, get it now !!!" commercials, which results in an "I need it all." materialistic view. Meanwhile, there's a billion of people starving in the other half of the world.
Changing this all will require many decades, but I agree that FOSS really is very futuristic in this context, just like a bright spark that may light the fire of Revolution (how poetic, ah).
About nanotechnology:
I fear that if it happened too soon, it would most certainly fall into wrong hands. Military of some great country (not to say USA) would use it to build weapons of unseen destruction and then use those weapons to conquer (or at least threat) countries that are rich in resources (today we see this happening with countries that have oil, tomorrow it will probably be about water).
Maybe the best time to develop nanotechnology would be a little after capitalism collapses, nanotechnology would then be the tool that would get the humanity out of chaos, and humanity with nanotechnology would probably go to a nice postcapitalistic age.
What about trying to join people who are concerned to cooperate and share their resources, problems, solutions? Hum? Have a look at 'Competition X Cooperation' topic.
Maybe that is the way to seek the feasebity of a future money economy...
Rijik.
monserrat wrote:
What about trying to join people who are concerned to cooperate and share their resources, problems, solutions? Hum?
I would really like to see this happen, although I must say I am quite pesimistic about it. I think that most people will not cooperate if they are not threatened by something. Even in Star Trek, there are many enemies that threaten to conquer The Federation. Without these enemies, Star Trek would be merely a soap-opera placed in space. And soap-operas are boring.
What I am trying to say here is that people can be moved and united if they (as a whole) have a problem. Without a problem, there would be nothing to cope with and people would come up with some new, interior problems that would break this unity.
Free software movement brought together many people because of the problems with proprietary software that were recognized and now are being fought against. Free software movement tries to make this problems clear to computer users; when this happens with majority of users, free software wins.
So, before people become aware of problems with the type of economy we have today, there will be almost no one to join, just a few ones that will be (wrongly) called communists.
"Speculating" or even "predicting" any kind of future money-less society never implies that this is to happen anytime soon or easily. It is just looking up to the future that might be worth going for, but doing it by making first tiny steps like free software movement is and furthermore free information ideology as a whole..
You speak about an enemy that forces people to unite in order to fight it. I believe that this enemy are this very society as such, so to say, ourselves. You just pointed out that free software movement was raised from the same reason, fighting an enemy within the very human society.
This is why i don't really think that the great forces from the ouside (such as aliens in ST) are so neccessery for a society to start making significant shifts.
When humanity sees that something is utterly wrong with their social system making their very existence harder and even making it worse through time, they must act. That is and should be an incentive enough.
Thank you
Daniel
Libervisco wrote:
When humanity sees that something is utterly wrong with their social system ...
Exactly, I pointed out the same thing (except I was talking about economy system).
The question here is how bad things have to become for humanity to see that something is wrong. Today things are pretty bad for most of the people (all those starving people in poor countries), but most of the other people isn't bothered by this, they just don't care. And these are the ones that have the power to change the world.
About the aliens, I still think that some kind of alien threat would speed up things a bit.
Dear Stojic and Livervisioners,
The "aliens" are here with us in our every day life!
Wherever we are, in the streets, in universities, in churches, in supermarkets, at home, we see the advertisements of Big Companies: buy this, be superior than others, have a better looking than others, have a car which goes faster and look better than others, and so on. And they are ruling our lives and many people do not note them... :shake:
Do you like it? So many people. And among these are those who may get together to cooperate with each other. The start is with these.
Stojic wrote:
I would really like to see this happen, although I must say I am quite pesimistic about it.
To join people who are concerned to cooperate and share their resources, problems, solutions is a hard task. undoubtly. But it is not impossible. See for instance software people here in Libervis, in several FS and OS comunities. They are already getting closer together. :yes: So, the start has already begun!
Why not to try to make the same with cooperative people of all other areas of society?
Rijik.
Have you read 'About the Potential of E-democracy'?
Let me pick up a little part of that:
in the beginning of XVIII century, "capitalism hardly put itself as an alternative to the feudal system.
. . .
For a long time capitalist proto-enterprises cohabited with the craft production of master workshops and fought against the free market impediments held by craft workshops and by the feudal system. Technological innovations finally made the difference. Inventions such as the sewing machine, 'jeanny', etc, were developed in those new enterprises [5]. Nevertheless, the first inventions were also used by craft workshops, allowing a certain balance with the new manufacturing enterprises.
When, however, the innovations demanded a huge amount of financial resources, the capitalist manufacturing system of production had a decisive competitive advantage over the craft one. Inventions like 'water-frames', 'stream engine', 'loom machine', etc, could be afforded only by capitalist enterprises which operated through shares, accumulated capital and employed large numbers of workers."
The start for the proto-companies were also very hard until they got to make a whole system of an actual capitalist market. and eventually overcome feudalism system.
So, the start is always small and I think we have to be happy that this start has already been started at least in the FOSS comunity. :yes:
Rijik.
Stojic,
I saw the "alliens" yesterday.
I went shopping with my wife yesterday. It is not a good experience to go shopping with women, I must tell you... :nonnon: Generally they are not able to decide easy things quickly and last long time looking for this and that... Oh, horrible! Let me stop here before some woman here tells me to shut up my mouth.
By the way, where are the women of Libervis? I haven't heart anyone so far... :-o
Let's go back to the alliens. She wanted John Lenon's song entitled 'Happy Xmas (was is over)', a very nice song. In a CD shop we found the song but it was very expensive: R$ 45,00 (our currency is called 'real') , which means about 15 US$. Of course we didn't buy it.
Then we went to a 'camel�' that is a sort of free street shop, which don't pay taxes and don't rent a shop building and usually sell ilegal products (pirates), often from contraband. Well, we found Lenon's Xmas song and bought it by R$ 5,00 !!! Just 5 reais !!!
Some time ago I read elsewhere in Internet that a CD price was something like this (I don't remember the exact figures)
1 to 2 reais --> CD physical midia plus cost of recording
1 to 2 reais --> to author's copyright
around 4 to 5 reais --> advertisement and marketing costs
So, who is earning so much money from a 45 reais of Lenon's CD?
You know what I mean? They are the "aliens" which are all around us. And the competive rules of capitalist market do protect them. These rules, the private onwership of the means of production among them, do foster this capitalist (and bad) competition which ends by stimulating monopolies.
I'm afraid that there is no good capitalist competition in so far as its rules force capitalist companies (included FOSS ones) to seek mainly profit and to rule out possible competitors. To be successful inside this capitalist rules environment yhe companies are forced to pursue the monopoly goal.
What I'm trying to say is that we should go beyond capitalist rules of "free market" (freedom to explore others and make monopolies). We should think of cooperative rules of a really free (and cooperative) market for a new economic system, and to make a really free competition UNDER cooperative rules. Not the opposite, as happens today.
Stojic, Prosario, James, Danijel, Mjjohansen and woman of Libervis, what do you thing about this?
Rijik.
monserrat wrote:
What I'm trying to say is that we should go beyond capitalist rules of "free market" (freedom to explore others and make monopolies). We should think of cooperative rules of a really free (and cooperative) market for a new economic system, and to make a really free competition UNDER cooperative rules. Not the opposite, as happens today.
It would be great to have cooperation not only inside companies, but also "on top" of them. Today we have this situation with the companies (from the outside in):
market - competition - company - cooperation
You are suggesting to transform it somehow so that it looks like this:
market - cooperation and competition - company - cooperation
Cooperation inside a company today exists because company (as an set of individuals who cooperate) has an goal. This goal, as you have pointed out, is a monopoly goal. And cooperation between companies doesn't exist because of this same goal - you will not cooperate with those who you want to rule out by competition.
Inside companies, besides cooperation, there also exists competition. This is a competition between coleagues competing for a promotion or better salary. This competition is "healthy" because coleagues have common goal, which is success of their company. Inside a company therefore exists competitive cooperation, which is what we would like to see happening between companies.
The main goal of transformation of today's economy would therefore be to somehow bring cooperation into competition between companies and create market ruled by rules of competitive cooperation. The main difficulty here is, as I see it, the fact that companies today have no common goal, they have nothing that could bring them all together as cooperatives, so they stay enemies that compete for monopoly. And charge you 45 whatevers for something that is worth 5 whatevers.
While it is obvious to us that improving humanity is perfect common goal of all individuals (and companies), companies are short sighted and don't see anything that is farther than market and its capitalistic rules. And if some company even starts cooperating and publishing its knowledge, it will soon be used and ruled out by other companies.
I think that the best way to accomplish this transformation is to change individuals, one by one, and drag them away from materialism. With enough people who are really aware that the best goal for everyone is betterment of humanity and that the best way to get to this goal is cooperation, people will start changing their companies from the inside out, and finally bring cooperation to a higher level.
The problem with this is that capitalism tries really hard to make people as materialistic as possible, it is self-preserving and hard to fight against.