X-Message-Number: 10899
From: 
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 20:37:40 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: the death of money.

To Thomas Donaldson:


(1) Anything human labor can accomplish can be done (usually better) by machine.

John Henry lost out to the steam-driven hammer.

It's gone that way ever since.


If human labor is used to mine or deliver commodities, machines can replace 
those humans.

Even to mine or deliver titanium.


When automation destroys money, the concept of "cost" will cease to have 
meaning.


Exchange, trade and in all its facets will be as irrelevant as "buying" air is 
today.

This is the death of money I have writing about.


(2) When there are specific limited resources WHAT WILL YOU OFFER ME to "get" my
share?


If you want the island of Fiji, but anything else I might need to live is freely
available, 
there is nothing you can give me I need.

I certainly won't need your money.

And neither will you.


(3) There is nothing wrong with being willing to be "pampered pets of our 
machines".


By the standards of the past, WE ALREADY ARE.  (Think I'll microwave a cup of 
coffee).

(4) The appeal to finite resources didn't even work for the Club of Rome.

The ecology of life didn't stop in the 1980's after all!


Money will be long dead before we start to worry about running out of material 
on THIS world, 
much less the entire solar system.

To Peter Merel:


Yes, I can easily imagine a society lacking contracts when needs are 
automatically supplied by 
automation.

See my above point (2).


You suggested regarding the internet, "Let's say the net was just you, me, a 
couple of ttys and 
a wire."

BUT IT ISN'T.

The reality of automation and all past work is why this system works at all.

Now it IS "free".

Besides, my point is that YOU are not paying ME anything for my ideas here.


Many such services and products are freely given by the creators without 
interest in "trade".

Again, like THIS communication.


Later you suggest as Thomas Donaldson did, the argument of finite resources 
(point 4).


But again, if we both want the moon, as you suggest, WHAT WILL YOU OFFER ME if 
my other needs 
are provided for?


Again, this is only pointing out why money cannot always prevent war, for 
example.


If I don't want or need your "money", nor ANYTHING else you have to offer, this 
only further 
underlines why money will die when this condition becomes commonplace.

To All:


I do not know when money will die but I can see nothing that will keep it alive 
once 
technological automation of human labor reaches a certain level.


My entire point is to attempt to share this simple but important issue with 
those overly 
concerned with "taking it with you".


I challenge you to see beyond the "common sense" of the present time to where 
major trends are 
taking all of us.


The death of money is just one of several upsets to the 20th century paradigm 
which will occur.

The Czar could not forsee the rise of Communism.

The West was blind to the sudden collapse of Communism.

What is ahead will be even less familiar.

But money won't be a part of it.

It's only a matter of time.

See you then.

-George Smith

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