Transferability of money

[The Dharma Bum]

Consider the idea of redesigning our economy by changing how money functions. Currently it is not an very utilitarian system for the greater part of the population and tends to serve for the benefit of a particular social class rather than as a true public resource.

Perhaps an issue with our economic system is the the full transferability of funds. Consider this, if funds were in the form of an economic voucher with limited transferability then crimes such as bribery or monetary theft become impossible. Even begging would be impossible. All forms of monetary manipulation would disappear.

I think this could have some pretty interesting implications for a free society. All it would entail is making money disappear when it spent, instead of transferring to another entity.

[Stratego]

How would ordinary purchases work? Say you want to buy done fried chicken.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

Basically speaking this is a way to achieve a system that adequately addresses the externalities without resort to Coasian bargaining or the use of Pigovian taxes, which are how we currently address the realities that our economic theorizing ignores.

The objective fact is that capitalism, while extremely energetic, is highly inefficient and not really compatible with a society that is actually free. It require a vast armada of propagandists to delude the public into believing their interests coincide with those of the elite class, which is more waste. We have had to come up with ways to deal with problems within that framework and the results aren't very good when facing the problems of modern society. Mainly the result has been wholesale neglect of important social institutions such as healthcare.

Capitalism may have brought us this far, but I don't think it will take us much farther, it's become obsolete and unwieldy, it's time to start thinking about some of this stuff.

[eynon81]

Wouldn't your system just favor those who possess commodities?

[Spider]

Kinda what I was thinking. Time to start stockpiling.

Unless of course the community would have to vote about whether or not I've got the right to do so.

Everyone in the community having to decide what everyone else is allowed to do strikes me as an administrative nightmare. Very inefficient. To say nothing of the fact that nobody is free, since they have to have general approval to so much as open a KFC.

Liberty > forced and artificial "equality".

Some people are smart, some are stupid. Some make good decisions, some make bad ones. Some people are lucky, some are victims of circumstance. Trying to design a system that removes these wrinkles from society is ultimately self defeating simply because human nature is more powerful than idealism.

[eynon81]

[The Dude]

I think you are simply describing communism (the real one) that is somewhat monitored (take what you need but you still gotta contribute and not do it in excess).

Otherwise it makes no real sense.

[The Dharma Bum]

[eynon81]