# A Perfect Monetary System - Is it possible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 7, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654 "2008-11-07T16:36:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/21 "2008-11-08T01:25:30Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Just to pick a single point - you can expand this to all of your other points. > > People aren’t motivated by the same thing. Some want to work extremely hard, use 2 weeks of vacation a year and get paid more money. Others want to work hard for a year and then take 3 months off to travel. Some jobs are seasonal and attract people who want that lifestyle. Our current system allows people to decide themselves what is best for them. > > Under your system, what does the person who wants to work a few years saving up money and living frugally, and then backpack in Europe for a year supposed to do? What does the business owner (or are they eliminated from your system) who wants to work hard with no vacations for 20 years to build up a business that they can leave to their family, then retire at 50 to Florida and play golf do? > > What makes you think that you or any group of people knows what is the best and only way to make a life? > > BTW, your proposal has little to do with the monetary system but is about our entire economy. You’re advocating pure communism. What I said about the vacation time was an example… Surely, I’m not one to decide how this will work out. This would be one of those aspects shown in a business proposal before it being established. If you aren’t satisfied with your vacation leave with one company, then don’t take the job and look for other opportunities. Seasonal? Valid point. Should one be a seasonal worker, they must qualify for a job that offers seasonal positions. As a seasonal worker your job may be considered 4x more important than a regular job, therefore balancing it out. For instance, someone’s regular job may be a waitress 8 hours per day 5 days per week, but your seasonal job might be an engineer working twice that much. There is no business owner… If a business is established it is owned and operated by the state as a whole for whichever state(s) it resides in. Should you be creative enough to build a business plan that would be very attractive, maybe you’ll be thrown a treat for such a great idea. Maybe a nice car, without waiting, or maybe a 3 year vacation. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/22 "2008-11-08T01:45:41Z")
Who would be in charge of the state? Who would be the judge in these courts that put people in prison for refusing to work? Who controls the prisons? What is the check on these people if they abuse their power? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/23 "2008-11-08T01:49:24Z")
Yes, but who decides what reward you should get? And why can’t you choose your own reward? Suppose you come up with a new idea, and as a reward for the idea you want a Ferrari. You go down to the Ferrari distributor and find there’s a waiting list 10,000,000 long. Then you tell the Ferrari distributor that you just had this great idea, so you should go to the head of the line. Does the Ferrari dealer let you go to the head of the line? Why or why not? How is this decision made? Under a capitalist system, someone with a good idea can sell it for money, or use the idea in a moneymaking business. They can then take the money to a vast array of businesses offering goods and services of every description. When the person finds a good or service that sounds like a good deal, they can buy it. And the person they bought the good/service from now has the money, which is a record that the first person thought the second person provided a good or service worth whatever the price was. And now the second person can take that money and spend it on whatever goods/services the second person likes. And now the third person has a token that entitles them to goods and services. The beauty of the capitalist system is that people who provide goods and services that are desireable to other people find themselves with tokens that entitle them to goods and services of equal value. Money is therefore an incredibly powerful mechanism for transmitting information from person to person, even though no one entity in the economy knows much of anything about the economy. ---
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/24 "2008-11-08T02:16:26Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Their paycheck is their food and water and housing and gasoline and and what luxuries you dole out to them. They stop working they stop eating, you chuck them out, and they die within a week. Right? If that’s not living from paycheck to paycheck, nothing is Point is no one is going to do this. Why would they? If you could have anything in the world and all you had to do was serve coffee at Starbucks (being that this is the only thing you qualified for), I’m sure one wouldn’t be complaining. There are always very rare cases though. If you simply can’t deal with working a job that is FIT for you in every possible way and no one can convince you otherwise, then so be it. You’re of no use to others. Why should they have to work while you do nothing? In this world now if you choose not to work or be productive in any way than you will end up homeless too. That’s the choice you have. No work, no play. And they wouldn’t be chucked out as in, completely disregarded and blocked from the system. They’d first go to a court to discuss their reasoning for not wanting to work. If it’s something that can be fixed, the necessary support would be given (schooling, medicine, etc). If you were found to be mentally impaired, you’d also be given the necessary support. If you were just a butthole you can be with the rest of the buttholes. > [@begbert2](#): > > So, like I said, no early retirement then. (Did you read _my_ post.) 25 years _or so_… I was just giving an example. If your job is considered the utmost importance (an astronaut) you might retire in 5 years. There are too many variables here. > [@begbert2](#): > > Without money, companies left to themselves would fold isntantly - they’d have no way to track accumulated value for created and distributed products, and they’d have no way to establish an exchange for the goods and supplies necessary to make their products and run their business. Literally _everything_, at every stage of the production process from renting an office to building a factory to procuring steel to buying paperclips would be wholly run by the government - and, of course, everybody from the janitor to the CEO will be looking to the government for their ‘paycheck’ - they’ll report their labor to the government, and get their weeekly allocation of food and housing vouchers and ferraris in return. Okay, so I said their may be a limit on your necessities, but this can be changed. If you spent all of your grocery money, but were still hungry, you could go to the court and plead you have an eating disorder or are on a high food intake diet and want a larger allowance. On the other hand, if you were hoping to be able to bring 20 more egg cartons home so you can throw them at your neighbors house, then that probably wouldn’t fly. There is no government. There is no ruler, but there are rules. The people work together as a whole and run their state. All decisions are made by the people of the state. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/25 "2008-11-08T02:21:30Z")
> [@EpicNonsense](#): > > Point is no one is going to do this. Why would they? If you could have anything in the world and all you had to do was serve coffee at Starbucks (being that this is the only thing you qualified for), I’m sure one wouldn’t be complaining. I would. I did. I left work and traveled, skied, and just hung out for 4 months about 6 years ago. Why? Because I could. I’d worked hard for 20 years and saved more then enough to live for years without working if I’d wanted to. What I wanted was to spend 4 months without working. Why can’t I have that? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/26 "2008-11-08T02:21:46Z")
> [@EpicNonsense](#): > > Well, I haven’t gotten into how a business would be started yet. How many products would be built? This will depend. Before a new company is created the people would make a vote as to it being created and operated or not. During this voting should a large interest be taken in the business they would be able to calculate what kind of demand for this business there would be. If it’s going to be a state-wide business, there would be less votes required before coming to a decision, a larger business would require more people. For any business to be started you’d be looking at about 95% positive outlook from the voters. If the business slowly dwindles down over time then employees could find a new job to do. Among other things, everybody is going to spend a lot of time voting, and most of the things they’re voting on, they’ll be ignorant of. I don’t know, for instance, if a new steel mill should be built. And that’s not how you figure out demand. Demand is a fluid, ever changing thing…it changes based on conditions, it changes based on individuals, it changes based on price. You can’t just say “Well, we’ll take one vote and figure out what demand will be.” You also realize that starting a business involves a lot of sunk costs, right? Your proposal seems really inefficient. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/27 "2008-11-08T02:27:04Z")
> [@EpicNonsense](#): > > There is no government. There is no ruler, but there are rules. The people work together as a whole and run their state. All decisions are made by the people of the state. It seems like a lot of allocation decisions are made by “the court”. The court decides who doesn’t have to work, the court decides who gets products they aren’t otherwise entitled to, the court can place you in a job you don’t otherwise qualify for. That sounds a lot like a government. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/28 "2008-11-08T02:33:23Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > It’s basically what **Captain Amazing** said. I could’ve sworn that **Sam Stone** made a very nice post to that effect sometime in the past few months, and I’ve been searching for it, but I’m not able to find it. It’s in “How long could the Soviet Union have lasted?” His post [is here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10119612&postcount=10). ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/29 "2008-11-08T02:59:30Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > It’s in “How long could the Soviet Union have lasted?” His post [is here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10119612&postcount=10). Damn. That thread came up in all my searches, and I’m not really sure why, in looking for discussion on centrally planned economies, I didn’t think to check the thread on the Soviet Union. As relevant as it is, I think I’m going to quote it here: > [@How long could the Soviet Union have lasted?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-could-the-soviet-union-have-lasted/460785/10): > > There’s an even more fundamental reason why central planning can’t work - central planners simply cannot possess the information required to effectively allocate the nation’s resources. Not only because there’s far too much of it and the economy is far too complex, but because it doesn’t even exist until people are forced to make rational choices that central planning does not force them to make. > > Pretend you are a central planner. You’re trying to figure out how many hammers to make this year for the construction industry. How do you do that? Well, you could ask all the people in the country if they need a hammer, and build them. But many people will say they do, and they really don’t. Hey, free hammer. But even if these people are honestly trying to help the state an only request a hammer they really need, they are still going to over-estimate. The information about the _real_ need for hammers doesn’t exist until you weigh the personal value of owning a new hammer against the personal value of owning all the other things you could have instead. So even a person who could really use a hammer might actually rather have a new screwdriver, because he needs that even more - but no one asked him. He may not even realize he needs the screwdriver more, because the relationships between the things you value doesn’t even develop in you mind until you are forced to make trade-offs between them. > > This is what prices do. They force you to rationally examine all your needs and decide which are more important. They tell you which jobs make more sense for you to do. > > Then there’s the complexity aspect. You order more hammers. But now there’s a shortage of wood for the handles, because you didn’t tell the wood manufacturers to increase the harvest. Or maybe you did, but now there’s a shortage of logging vehicles. Or maybe you’re really smart and thought of that too. But now there’s a shortage of motor oil. Or a shortage of ball-bearings because the hammers you ordered increased demand for steel, which the ball-bearings in the trucks also need. The ramifications of any production decision in a complex economy are astounding. It’s kind of like the six-degrees of separation thing - a big order of hammers can wind up effecting the availability of corn flakes though a complex series of interactions no one person or central planning bureau can possibly understand. > Now think of the billions of decisions like this that are made every day. Imagine a central planner trying to sort out all the conflicting demands on the nation’s resources and allocate everything efficiently. It simply can’t be done. You can have the best, fastest, smartest computers in the world, and they can’t do it either, because the information they need to be efficient is still locked up in the brains of the citizenry. > > A capitalist economy is like a massively networked, massively parallel computer system with billions of feedback loops keeping things in balance. Information flows through the price system, carrying the knowledge and desires of everyone exactly where it needs to go. If I decide I need a hammer, not only do I send a signal to the hammer manufacturer that his hammer is useful and in demand, but the fact that I didn’t buy other things sends signals to all the people I might have purchased from instead. Production is increased for hammers, and decreased for the other things. And hammer production raises demand for steel and wood, which raises their prices. This makes hammers slightly more expensive for the next person. But it also makes other things that use steel more expensive. So suddenly all the people who use steel have to decide if it’s still worth it. Some will switch to alternatives. Or their prices will go up and people will buy less, easing the demand on steel. Or maybe the increased price of hammers will decrease their demand, lowering the price of steel for the things we value more. > > In the meantime, the new, higher price for steel stimulates production of it, reflecting the new reality of our increased desire for steel. > > Everything falls back to an equilibrium, with new prices reflecting the new reality of the relative trade-offs of all these goods. > > None of this can effectively happen in a centrally planned economy. That’s one reason why all centrally planned economies fail, and why they all tolerate a large black market - the black market becomes a market-driven safety valve which helps keep the whole rickety affair going for a while. > > But the key question you asked is whether or not the Soviet Union could have survived. Sure it could have. Never underestimate the power of fear in keeping a crappy poor country going. North Korea is still around, despite its people being in a constant state of near-starvation. Saddam’s government was remarkably stable despite the horrible suffering of the people. Compared to those countries, life in the Soviet Union wasn’t that bad. North Korea has a per-capita income of a few hundred dollars a year. The Soviet Union had a per-capita income more than ten times higher. The people generally weren’t starving - they were just severely under-performing their potential. > > It would have eventually collapsed, no doubt. But that collapse could have come in ten years, or in fifty. ---
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/30 "2008-11-08T03:01:28Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > It seems like a lot of allocation decisions are made by “the court”. The court decides who doesn’t have to work, the court decides who gets products they aren’t otherwise entitled to, the court can place you in a job you don’t otherwise qualify for. > > That sounds a lot like a government. But the decisions made in the court are by those who are a part of society. A jury. A specific jury, though. If this case was one of a man who wanted more food because of his eating disorder, the jury would probably consist of people in the field, such a pharmacists, doctors, etc… If a man killed someone over an iPhone because he didn’t want to wait 2 weeks, then the jury would probably consist of criminologists, psychologists, etc… ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/31 "2008-11-08T03:28:39Z")
But why not simplify things? In your utopia, everyone is free to simply take what they need from the stores, and in return they are obligated to work at some sort of job. But what’s wrong with doing away the requirement to work at a job. Instead, why not simply give anyone who produces something of value to humanity a token. And this token could be exchanged for anything else of value. The way to accumulate tokens is by serving your fellow man. And you can choose anything you like out of all the manifold goods and services produced by mankind as long as you produce enough tokens for a fair exchange. We could call these tokens “money”. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654/32 "2008-11-08T03:28:44Z")
> [@EpicNonsense](#): > > But the decisions made in the court are by those who are a part of society. A jury. A specific jury, though. > > If this case was one of a man who wanted more food because of his eating disorder, the jury would probably consist of people in the field, such a pharmacists, doctors, etc… A court is a function of government. That’s what it is. You can’t say it’s magically not government just because the jury is chosen specifically for each case. That just raises the question: chosen by whom? And the answer is: the _government_. Look, even if you have the entire voting population deciding each jury member for each case, then you still have a government. It just happens to be a direct democracy that votes on so many issues that no individual voter could possibly become well informed on even the tiniest fraction of them. If you have the voters elect decision makers, then it’s a representative democracy, which is (by the way) still a government. And then you still need people with guns to enforce the rulings of the court. And those people with guns are agents of the executive power of the government, even if you don’t call them police. The simple fact is that you don’t know how any of this works. That’s okay. We all have to start somewhere. But you don’t have any chance of having a meaningful thread until you educate yourself about: 1. What a government is and what its functions are. 2. What communism is, and why your “monetary reform” is in fact the same thing as communism. 3. How the finiteness of resources undermines your attempts at giving everyone everything they would want. 4. How money is not just a measure of value, but also a _store_ of value so that people whose work adds more value to the world can take more time off if they so choose. 5. How markets efficiently determine value in a way that nation-wide votes cannot possibly match (see the link to **Sam Stone** ’s post provided by **erislover** for a start to that). You have, literally, years of study to do. The Dope is a good place to fight ignorance, but a few college economics and poly-sci classes might be a better place to start. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-perfect-monetary-system-is-it-possible/471654.md?page=1)