Commerce is just the exchange of goods and services. If we all stop exchanging goods, in what sense would we have a civilization? What would you or anyone accomplish if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes, build your own house…?
Commerce is fine, greed is not. OP missed that distinction.
Commerce != currency
Currency is a natural evolution of commerce. Direct barter only works if the person selling what you need wants something you have.
Say you want to buy flowers. If the florist wants shoes and you only have bread or hammers to spare, then tough luck.
Any large society cannot function with such a clunky way to exchange goods/services. Currency is merely a proxy that allows both sides to trade their goods using a tool they both value similarly. Hell, some civilisations used giant boulders as currency… it’s hardly a new concept.
An exchange of goods and services means you get nothing unless I get something. Maybe OP means everything is given as you take what you need with nothing expected in return.
You grow carrots, you bring them to town once a week. Other lady raises chickens, brings eggs once a week. If you need either you take some. You use the eggs to make cookies, you have extra, you give them away to anyone you see for the day.
This works at a feudal technology level. Who makes the trains? They train makers need steel and literally no one would work in a forge or a mine for fun/preference.
Who makes computer chips?
Idk little Jimmy has bees having so much fun in the coal mines he’s 24 hours past the end of his shift
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In a communist society, say Soviet Russia, were the goods for a train really exchanged?
Like yeah, the ore comes from the mine, gets smelted, coked, forged, brought to another factory for machining, another factory for assembly.
So does it fulfill the definition requiring exchange of goods? I argue not, The goods were transported, but the ownership remained with the government.
People with the skills show up and collectively make chips, there may be less than produced by typical “blood from a rock” endless growth pacing, but there would at least be enough chips for hospitals, emergency services.
And without the profit motive, the products made would actually be built to last and engineered to be serviceable because there’s actually incentive for them to NOT be disposable.
In order to create modern tech, you’ll need not only specialized knowledge, but also raw materials. I’m not convinced there would be any volunteer to mine cobalt and lithium without getting paid.
First, the easiest one: Silicon is never going to be serviceable or upgradeable. That’s not how it works.
There’s no chance of all that happening out of good will. Look up what goes into making a Fab (Intel has some tour videos).
These aren’t the things that people “with the skills” show up for. It takes a lifetime of studying for some of the layers of these topics, not to mention collaboration between the others (or even finding them, if only the hospitals and emergency services would have access to computers, and therefore professional networking and email).
There are some truly awful jobs on this planet. Look up how sulfur is collected. People literally climb into volcanos to chip it off the walls and carry up sometimes 200lbs on their backs. One trip on that pumice and you’re toast.
People need incentives, and with no money, there would be a power vacuum…for another kind of money. I’m not saying capitalism is great or anything, don’t get me wrong. But you can’t just get rid of money.
Incentive is social praise, respect of your neighbors and personal fulfillment knowing you have a needed skill. When all you’re other needs are met, it could be enough.
I think the main problem here is that a few in this that are thinking 1:1 replacement - I’m not saying the Apple store is going to be fully functional, I’m saying I’ve known and worked with a lot of great engineers that like to solve problems, almost compulsively. If society made sure “the rest was taken care of” so they could do what they did best, they’d put in solid work week each week, help train others, etc.
Also, too many of you are caught up on the 40 hour work week. It’s not needed and in a better structure you’d work less often. I’m realistic, the world won’t get there on my lifetime or maybe ever, but it could work.
This whole detailed dive into silicon aspect specifically is a strawman though, that’s not the point of the discussion.
The supply chains used in making modern processors are immense and span many industries all around the world. I don’t think people are going to put the tremendous amount of effort into that just because.
This horribly underestimates the laziness, indifference, and selfishness of the general public. It only works if you zoom out enough to ignore the individual’s interest.
Capitalism may hold us back in some regards but really helps in others.
The majority of people would likely be feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.
I suppose not much has changed then
The majority of people
would likely beare feudal peasants, working under a warmonger family that owns the sustaining land by force. No upward mobility except through bloodshed.FTFY
No you don’t understand, this 9-to-5 job that’s slowly but surely wearing me down is just a stepping stone to my millions of $$. That’s why I keep voting for tax breaks for the rich; because I’ve just been temporarily down on my luck for 30 years. /s
No, if you’re lucky, clever enough, overwork yourself, or manipulate others you can live a somewhat comfortable life. Those methods don’t require taking a life.
overwork yourself
comfortable life
Make it make sense
Comfortable as in “you have a heated living space, food on the table, and security.” Don’t be dense.
That’s not living comfortably, that’s the bare minimum everybody should have
100 years ago people round here still had no electricity and depended on wood stoves yet. You are really spoiled.
Capitalism optimizes for efficiency. Sadly slavery is terribly efficient in terms of economics. Therefore capitalism needs to be capped by society at certain acceptable limits. Which is called socioeconomics and its not perfect but the best system we have. insert handwavy remark about whatever america is doing here
the problem with this is that we depend on the capitalist overlords to keep their pinky promise of not fucking with our rights.
right now they are breaking it again because they can.
i also don’t think having the majority of the money/value going to a few owners is efficient at all.
Capitalism is based on free exchange and wage labor. Unless a slave has volunteered to be a slave, using a slave is not “free exchange”.
Thats still in a sense a commerce based system. The only reason that warlord fights for that land is because it has value, be it food, a cash crop, a strategic location.
Warlords hoarded land and power in similar ways billionaires hoard money and power.
Capitalism optimises for concentrating resources.
Dividends, return on investment, profits, etc. are all inefficiencies in the production of value, and require more resources, labor, and suffering per unit of value than for example a circular economy.
But it does concentrate wealth efficiently, which in turn gives access to enough resources to start larger ventures.
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Significantly less, since commerce and the ability to trade things for a different value forms the basis for civilization. It’s easy to grow and hunt your own food, because that’s immediate and concrete. The farther away you get from that, the more abstract that thing becomes. It’s going to be harder for people to feel any sense of connection and purpose with making the rubber that goes into a seal on the International Space Station when they don’t see any direct benefit from the research done there, and they likely can’t even see the indirect benefit of that fundamental research.
For good or ill, commerce is how civilizations universally work, and you’d have to imagine a completely different species that evolved under vastly different circumstances to have anything else.
I think personally That commerce as we know it has played it’s role in the success of humanity But now more and more of the bad is showing and way way less of the gain
I personally think it’s time to move on or at the very least adapt the systems we have in place
Edit: this was more focused on capitalism not commerce
Imagining a society with out trade is a very hard one for me to grasp
Well it doesn’t have to be private exchange between entities. There doesn’t have to be like for like. There can just be stockpiling and withdrawing, for lack of a more nuanced conception.
So you think we’d have to be an entirely different species for communism to work?
I’d argue a hell of a lot different, try n stop someone from doing something (sure keep them fed, sheltered, all the good stuff) but give them absolutely nothing to do. Try n keep them from killing themselves lol, sounds like actual hell to me
I think you’re conflating commerce with capitalism. I don’t think you could have communism without commerce. Even if you did away with currency and the rubber farmer is paid with grain and other foodstuffs that would still be commerce.
That’s a good point, cause personally I see it more like yee old humans were the first communists, simply doing things that had to be done cause their life was better thanks to it (unless you consider that a low level ‘payment’ I suppose)
For communism to work as intended past a tribal or perhaps city-state level, yeah, I’d say that we would need to be a different species. Communism works fantastically well when everyone is pretty closely connected; the larger a society gets, the less well it ends up working, without having draconian measures in place that largely eliminate all personal liberty.
I’m not saying that capitalism works well, unless you have a perverse definition of “well”. Capitalism does tend to give individuals some kind of incentive to work for what is nominally the greater good by creating the appearance that their own personal effort is tied to the results that they get. Conversely, communism, in large societies, has your input largely decoupled from what you get back. On a large scale, I think that democratic socialism will give the best overall results, but you have to ensure that no one has the ability to entirely fuck off and leech off the labor of everyone else without risking that infecting everyone, and resulting in nothing at all getting done.
Interesting, what would be the alternative? Technology, culture, religion, military? Taking those options out of Civ
I think that’s the key question. Like, I get capitalism is hedgemonical (is that even a word?), but what alternative do you propose?
“Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.”
What about socialism - ie, everyone gets their basic needs met, but is free to work for more.
It almost seems logical huh
Something like universal basic income along with free healthcare, education and social safety nets definitely is an attractive idea but even providing the basic needs for everyone is expensive as hell and you can’t just pay for it by cutting CEO pay. Economy is such a complex system that radical changes like this are guranteed to introduce new unexpected problems. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and find ways to make the world a better place for everyone but I feel like so many people naively think that the solution is obvious and right there and we’re just not doing it.
You’re probably describing capitalism with social welfare/safety nets. Whereas often socialism is considered to be specifically not capitalism and may not allow for the idea of working to get more resources
Fundamentally you’re probably happy with capitalism in terms of economy but want further govt regulation/welfare. Which I think is probably the best system we have
You could start by giving everyone a share of profits rather than pushing all the money up towards the people who have the most.
Let machines do the work so we can do what we want with our time. We’re working more than people did in the past despite our technology. And the reason we have to is the alternative is starving to death in the streets.
Both of these things violate the principles of capitalism.
Not having merit based on how much money something makes would be a start.
Kinda the spelling is hegemonic for further reference.
barter system worked fine for thousands of years
…in a very localized and narrow market.
It’s not that simple of an answer. If you want to label the past working fine as such you also have to accept and include the living standards and social-economic environment. Because our environment and world and how we live today are vastly different from back then.
How would you barter-trade production parts of a car, the building of a car, and then that car? How would you barter-trade research and technology development?
Without money, do you pay in a narrow, restrictive way like a place to live and food? Or do you pay in something that can be traded like money - where you practically replaced currency money with a different form of currency money?
religion
I’d love to see how that one plays out. Lol
Tbf we ostensibly already have and are again.
Being a lonely hunter gatherer.
If you have crafted nice spears and axes, but you have no food, that’s too bad. You’re not allowed to barter with talented hunters who can’t make spears as nice as you can. Go hunt your own food or die of starvation in this non-commerce based society.
Oh wait, how about we allow trading after all?
Comparative Advanta-whoosy whatsits?
Seems complicated, let’s get rid of it.
I’m currently reading The Day The World Stops Shopping by JB Mackinnon, which argues the same point you’re asking about, I think you’d find it interesting.
https://www.jbmackinnon.com/the-day-the-world-stops-shopping
imagine everything humans could accomplish if we used billionaires as food and fuel
Wouldn’t using them as food just be using them as fuel anyways? The only difference is what you’re going to fuel with them.
came to say this. food is fuel, we are merely labyrinthine biological furnaces that chemically incinerates whatever unfortunate matter may enter us. the fuel’s affluence is not typically relevant, but I’m a little out of touch on the science, I might be wrong.
It’s not science just precise language. Basically food is a distinct concept because it contains both energy and material to be used by the system. The word for such a mix is “food”.
Food is a combination of fuel and building material
What is a commerce based civilization? Isn’t everything commerce based?
If you feel the need to defend capitalism, then you should read “The Jungle”.
Is it time to advance to the Fortress Age?
Imagine agreeing on how to make decisions which affect other people.
What about a meritocracy based system where any type of contribution is rewarded, whether it be research, garbage cleanup, etc.? (I’m sure there’s holes to poke in it, just thinking outside of the box.)
The problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
And we already know how well that’s going to turn out.
And yet here you are, in the fediverse.
he problem with that and most other proposals for whatever other moneyless utopian society is that they all implicitly require some manner of all-powerful central authority to ensure that the rewards get distributed, the labor gets allocated, and the rules stay followed.
that really isn’t the case…
Communism by definition is not only moneyless but also stateless and classless (if there is an “all powerful” anything - it isn’t communism).
anarchism by definition abolishes all hierarchy, so again, no one person or even group gets to a point of having any significant power over anyone else.In both cases (which are the two most notable far left ideologies I would say, along with socialism which is inherent to both) not having an all powerful central authority is literally the point.
Attempting to have no authority may be the “point,” but here in reality that doesn’t actually work as long as humans remain what they are. It can only function so long as everyone involved cooperates to the very letter of the classless-moneyless-stateless social agreement and there is no outside disruption from anywhere else that doesn’t subscribe to the ideal. The moment someone figures out they can cheat to get more than others, it falls apart.
And what they want more of does not necessarily have to be money. It could be land, or crops, or coconuts, or a bigger hut, or more sexual partners, or shinier rocks, or internet post likes, or more prestige, or whatever.
One of two things then happen: They succeed, and become the authority. Or an authority has to be formed by some type of agreement by everyone else to stop them. This also inevitably begets violence.
You can try as hard as you like to evade this, but unless you lobotomize literally everyone or have magic mind control powers or something (which would require you to be… the authority) it is guaranteed that you will fail. Maybe not immediately, but the larger in scale your little social experiment gets the sooner it will happen. You can get 5 or 10 or maybe even 100 people to perfectly agree with each other and play along. If you’re lucky, you might even make it last for more than one generation. Don’t even try to argue that you could do it with a million people. Or ten million. Or 332 million (the population of the United States). Ceaseless cooperation in numbers beyond those of our immediate tribe- or family-sphere is not a trait that is found in humans.
Listen. I’m far from the worst human out there. But if I was introduced to a fair, classless, equal society, I would become their dictator faster than you can say “utopia”. No force to stop me, no one allowed to stop me, I’d be like smallpox to the Indians.
Hahaha imagine thinking no one would stop you. You’re an utter clown.
Well then it’s no longer fair, equal, and classless, is it?
Yes it is.
It does not mean you do nothing to protect your way of life and sit back like a hapless pacifist.
but here in reality that doesn’t actually work as long as humans remain what they are
Ceaseless cooperation in numbers beyond those of our immediate tribe- or family-sphere is not a trait that is found in humans.“reality” is what capitalism has indoctrinated you to think it is, meanwhile in actual reality, humans are and always have been hardwired to cooperate
and there is no outside disruption from anywhere else that doesn’t subscribe to the ideal
lol, so you acknowledge that attempts at communism couldn’t have succeeded because capitalism wouldn’t allow it (because capitalists consider communism, or any cooperation that isn’t for profit, an existential threat, which is precisely why they invest so much in to making people like you think it’s not only a bad idea, but an “impossible” one).
https://medium.com/international-workers-press/misconceptions-about-communism-2e366f1ef51f
You can try as hard as you like to evade actual reality, and the fact that capitalism is not only guaranteed to, but is already literally destroying humanity and the planet, or you can keep licking its boot that is not only stomping on your neck, but on all our necks, because you’re too scared or even unable (but definitely privileged enough to still find comfort in it - we aren’t all that lucky) to think outside of the box it created for you, but falling for the propaganda will never make you right, only demonstrably easily manipulated, and wilfully ignorant and resistant to change (when you refuse to even try to understand, let alone seriously contemplate the alternatives, you don’t get to dismiss them since you clearly don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about)… That’s a you problem, not a communism (or even “reality”) problem… ¯\(ツ)/¯
That’s odd, me and my housemates can distribute our housekeeping jobs amongst ourselves without having someone come along and tell us what to do.
Yet when it comes to the country I live in, this is suddenly unimaginable because who would want to live somewhere functional of their own volition.
It works for 4 people. It does not work for 4 million.
You’ve tried?
There’s this thing called democracy, where people can come together as a community to discuss issues and work out solutions - such as allocating work loads as need be, you see this in many large community projects across the world. That’s the same underlying principle my house uses, communication not authority.
I’m genuinely curious, how could communism be applied to millions of people without any central authority to oversee the system? Say, the sewer need to be maintained, and the people assigned to the work by the community decided “nah, I don’t want to clean the sewer” and not show up to work, what would the community do? What if the people assigned to mining coals decided they don’t want to mine coal anymore because it’s a horrible job and no one volunteer to replace them? Will the community force them to work or face punishment? If so, who make the decision if not a central authority?
That is literally an authoritarian system.
What do you think the role of ‘General Secretary’ was? Its tankie shit.
That is literally an authoritarian system.
Huh, wonder how they went from communism to authoritarianism. Well, surely that was a one time coincidence and not indicative of a systemic failure of communism as an ideology.
Kinda like how when we contribute our time to our jobs, we’re rewarded with… money?
Lol
Well, we would be still in caves cause commerce is the basement of civilization
Wow. Good luck building your stick cabin in the woods all by yourself and growing and foraging all your food because you refuse to trade your labor for produce from a farmer because that would be evil commerce.
Project much? 🤣🤣🤣
Your title is literally putting down commerce and you accuse me of projection? I don’t think you know what projection means.
You probably don’t even know what commerce means.
