Live Suite Dilemma

[Peter Korsten]

Gert van Santen schreef:

> You think inside the box. :-)

No, I'm just not into fantasies.

There reason that right now, we can communicate with people all over the 
world, and that we can choose the profession we want, instead of us all 
being farmers, is money.

Invent a system where you get 'credit' (for want of a better words) for 
the work you do, and can buy goods and services from that, it's still 
money. Giving it a different name won't change its nature.

The problem lies more with financial products. History has shown that 
capitalism is the system that works best, as long as it has checks and 
balances. You can't trust the market to regulate itself, so you need a 
government to do that.

Over the past few decades, governments have failed to do that, in the 
mistaken belief that more money - be it real, like cash in hand, or 
virtual, like stock options or investing in high-risk mortgages - is 
always a good thing.

But if you look at the alternatives to capitalism, none of the so-called 
communist or socialist states have managed to do without money. Because 
if nothing else, it allows you to plan. It's a simple way to give a 
weighted value to resources, services, labour, and all the other things 
that allow you to produce something: be it a house, an internet service, 
or a sack of potatoes.

If you look at individuals and families, you could argue that it's 
everybody's own responsibility to maintain his finances, but that's not 
the nature of the animal called 'human'. Have a look at psychological 
studies, and you'll see that men, in general, want to be seen as 
successful, in other words, a preferred partner to mate with. And women, 
in general, do prefer successful men for this very reason, because that 
will give a better chance to their offspring.

You could argue that we have evolved from those primitive instincts, but 
you would be fooling yourself. Maybe we will evolve to such a point, 
since men no longer go out and hunt/gather their food, but it will take 
quite a while.

So in this day and age, to appear successful, you would have a big or 
fast car, a big house, expensive jewellery, and all these things cost 
money - more money than a normal sized house or car.

And there we have a direct link between perceived successful genes and 
money. And you want to get rid of money? I don't think it will happen 
any time soon.

- Peter