I get the history as to why we got to our current economic situations, but no one is arguing for a system that casts off current economic issues that are pushing humanity towards destruction. I’m not saying this can happen over night or even within our current life time, but it’s obvious that capitalism and even socialism has reached the end of their usefulness.
Capitalism is fine, we just need to tweak regulations for it to better incentivize the result we (humanity) are looking for.
I wish I had your confidence that capitalism can be tweaked into a fair system.
I honestly think the logical end point to capitalism is self-destructive extreme wealth disparity.
It works in cycles.
The last Guilded Age (think Roaring 20s) ended with the great depression. Which then triggered the creation of all the great economic policies the boomers enjoyed as children, which they’ve been dismantling since the 70s.
Once things get bad enough, (very nearly there now) the cycle will repeat.
Why do you think this, and what does cycle even mean in this context? If everything is just a cycle repeating, couldn’t you argue we’re also frozen in a non-cyclic lack of progression?
The Salish Tribes existed in the PacNW for over 13,000 years without money.
Wampum was used by Eastern Costal tribes as a storytelling aid.
In the Salish Tribes, dentalium shell necklaces were used as a status symbol/indication of social rank. Some tribes used the necklaces as a type of currency, but I’ve only heard the “some tribes did this” part; never anything about which specific tribes used dentalium as currency.
Obviously, anything that holds perceived value can be traded.
Source: went to junior high in a school that taught two full years of Haudenosaunee (also called Iroquois) history.
Salish source: I’ve been a volunteer naturalist in the Puget Sound for eight years with an annual training requirement, with entire days allocated to history of the original Salish tribe for the area where we’re working.
no
It’s pretty hard to imagine a way for groups of people with varying goals and interests to operate without some form of value exchange. This can either be barter, or some form of currency. Our specific kind of extractive capitalism based on creating endless cycles of debt and credit can certainly be replaced with any number of alternatives, but the idea of money itself is just too basic and useful to humans, imo.
No.
First we need a better system for resource allocation. Monetary systems are extremely inefficient, but they’re far better than the “trust me, bro” approach of many of the alternatives.
A global post-scarcity society could in theory take over, similar to how it works in Star Trek, but there are a lot of other hurdles that need to be overcome first.
As long as proper distribution of resources requires an effort, it will also need an incentive to do so. Currently this incentive is provided by allowing for a profit margin, and while this does also provide a mechanism for skimming off the top, at least said skimming can be somewhat controlled by a free market ensuring better circumstances for those willing to skim less.
