So what's the attraction of moneyless economies?

[mindstalk]

"No money in the future" is a common thread in parts of the Left. I think it's in Marx's communism, if not a lot older. In science fiction, we've got Star Trek (at least ST IV and TNG/DS9), Banks' Culture ("money is a sign of poverty"), MacLeod's Solar Union, probably LeGuin's Anarres, and "post-scarcity" economies in general -- which tend to mumble if you take them literally and ask for a planet.

But why? Why is this so popular, as opposed to the leftism where everyone has enough money?

The way I see it, any group that has a lot of trade will have a money, hacked out of fungible high-demand goods or IOU time-labor scrip if nothing else. So to me saying "no money" is effectively saying "no trade", which doesn't sound very attractive.

One might appeal to computers and advanced barter exchanges, but while that might make it possible to work out "you give an IOU to make A in return for B, to trade for C, to trade for D, to trade for E which you actually want", I suspect a money would arise anyway.

There's so much automation that no one ever does anything useful, but that doesn't seem fun. There's that plus people doing things just for fun, and I don't rule it out entirely... but if there's a high-demand artist, maybe people end up bribing her to help on their projects.

"To each according to their need" is great and all, but what about getting what you *want*?

[This was better written in my head, I may revise later]

[Edit: discussion on RPG.net is circling around "post-scarcity" being the key: it's not that money is to be gotten rid of (well, that probably is an appeal some of the time) but that post-scarcity is the appeal, after which there's no role for money. Whether post-scarcity is realistic, even at personal nanoforge tech levels, is another matter.]

Comments

Re: Real Estate Economics

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Why would the Baron need -- or want -- to sell any land? He collects plenty of rent, and, as population rises, and, as you correctly note, as technology progresses, rent rises. All goes into his pocket. (In his sleep, the classical economists pointed out.)

Well, in the actual medieval environment, the Baron wanted to sell some of his land because he only had a local monopoly on land, and hence could not raise his rents as high as needed to meet any and all expenses, even ignoring the fact that the Baron faced both legal and extra-legal obstacles to rent-racking. And in a given year, he might need more cash than he could get from his rents in that year.

Suppose that the Baron is able to raise his rents without either being stopped by the courts (England was a society under law to a degree remarkable in the period, and raising his rents would violate his existing contracts with the tenants) or by an uprising. Past a point, his free tenants would start to leave (which was perfectly legal) -- past another point, his serfs would start to leave (illegal, but very difficult to prevent if they were determined).

His obvious solutions to the cash shortage problem were a loan secured by land, or the direct sale of land. Both faced legal obstacles in the medieval period, but both also had ways around the obstacles. And both were engaged in, repeatedly, when people like the Baron needed money.

And how did Richie Commons ever come up with lots of money?

Richie Commons was usually a greater merchant, though he might also be a very skilled artisan. I never said that the only economic activities in medieval England were farming and herding -- and they weren't.

The Baron's ability to collect in rent the lion's share of the social surplus may leave us in a position where only the J. K. Rowlings of the world will have lots of money without owning our land and our natural resources.

It didn't historically, in a much less liberal political system -- why should it now?

But if you want to see the darker path in history, look at 16th-18th century Eastern Europe, where the big landowners were able to reduce the population to serfdom. This was done with a lot of force, though, and at the cost of choking off the towns. And this eventually led to the hideous massacres of Communism and Naziism, when modernity finally caught up with the landowners.

It costs a great deal to move to another country, and so far there are few countries where policies are designed to make land cheap or free ...

It does not have to be "cheap" or "free" by your standards. Merely cheaper than that of the rent-raising Baron.

To put it another way, landowners compete with one another for tenants, just as tenants compete with one another for tenancies. If one raises one's rents too high above the market norm, one finds it difficult to gain or keep tenants.

This is true even if it's illegal for tenants to leave, as was the case in the system of serfdom. They eventually leave anyway, law or no law.

... (that is, where one doesn't pay the former owner large sums for value he didn't create -- but instead pays the commons annually for the privilege of having secure title to the site for as long as one uses it.) ...

It's not surprising that few countries engage in the mass plundering of their landowners' assets. Countries which do things like that usually tend to plunder other things as well, creating very unstable economies, investor flight, and vicious-cycle spirals into mass poverty. See "Cuba" and "North Korea" for good examples.

How many years of ("by choice") immigrants' labor have American landholders received by paying their passage across the Atlantic?

Not sure what you mean by that -- are you talking about the system of indentured servitude which existed in the 17th-18th centuries? And why is "by choice" in quotes? Most indentured servants did choose to sign the articles, though some were of course kidnapped.

Anyway, the actual history of England proves my points. And it proved them under less-than-ideal conditions, with the landowners having more than equal power and access to the law.

Re: Real Estate Economics

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

See "Hong Kong" for a counter-example. And "Adam Smith" for theoretical support.