"After all, almost nobody truly wants money itself—they want what money can buy." Amen! We need to collectively pause and consider what our true aims are. I hope to see this new economic system into creation but often fear it will take longer than what's left of my lifetime.
'Price' is a trickey thing and needs definition. In a 'true free market' it is something like 'the average', or 'willingness to pay', but both of the above definituons are assumptuons proven by action of every individual who participates in 'the market', and the margins (high and low) are where confusion sets in. There is no 'distortion' in a 'free market', in fact the contrary is true. In your example, charity, means 'altruism' or possibly 'tax deduction' in a 'non free market'. In a free market, it just 'IS'. It needs no explanation, nor ones own understanding. The fact it happened is 'The Proof'. I gave several BitCoins away, to a group of PhDs, and Professors. Two were the 'Weinstein' brothers Bret and Eric (they declined honerably and shall not be included here) as an experiment. The rest though, they thought I was 'mad as a hatter', despite they also thought BTC a 'scam'. Their actions did not match their words. My actions matched my words, I said BTC is an Idea, It is literal Truth, nothing more nothing less, its lowest use case is 'money'.....i am not wealthy either, it was half my 'worth' in dollars. All the other 50ish PhDs and Profesors, said 'you cant do that!'. I placed several 12 word seed phrases, each for 1 coin (about 48K$ each at the time) in open text on our group chat, and said, 'really? I just did'. Nobody would touch it. I said, 'well is it 48K$, or is it free, is it magnetic 1s and 0s, or is it free speach?', most importantly i said, 'how come you people with letters after your name are suddenly challenged by your own ideas of reality?' ;)
One of the most fun experiments ever. I had to make it REAL for me, but not immediately self lethal. I gave away as stated half of my life savings, but allowed a years worth of runway, to not find myself in terrible winter dying. You would be astounded what 'money' does to people. ;)
Only 4 comments and 2 likes. You have over 8K subscribers!! I have probed the same topic for close to 20y and my videos do better than my columns... care to participate in a podcast?
Aha, these are just some idealistic models here. But if we actually tried to do them right now, it would totally fail. Either everything would crash super fast, or worse - we'd end up with some scary new dictatorship that thinks violence is okay if it's for a "good cause". History's proved that over and over.
The real way forward is boring but practical stuff: better social programs, eco-friendly technology, recycling systems, making rich people pay more taxes. It's not exciting or perfect, but it actually works in the real world where nobody's perfect anyway
As I pointed out in the article, your proposed solutions are ultimately non-solutions if they aren’t coupled with a fundamental change in our socioeconomic system. For that system will eventually undo them, as it has inevitably done over and over in the past.
"After all, almost nobody truly wants money itself—they want what money can buy." Amen! We need to collectively pause and consider what our true aims are. I hope to see this new economic system into creation but often fear it will take longer than what's left of my lifetime.
'Price' is a trickey thing and needs definition. In a 'true free market' it is something like 'the average', or 'willingness to pay', but both of the above definituons are assumptuons proven by action of every individual who participates in 'the market', and the margins (high and low) are where confusion sets in. There is no 'distortion' in a 'free market', in fact the contrary is true. In your example, charity, means 'altruism' or possibly 'tax deduction' in a 'non free market'. In a free market, it just 'IS'. It needs no explanation, nor ones own understanding. The fact it happened is 'The Proof'. I gave several BitCoins away, to a group of PhDs, and Professors. Two were the 'Weinstein' brothers Bret and Eric (they declined honerably and shall not be included here) as an experiment. The rest though, they thought I was 'mad as a hatter', despite they also thought BTC a 'scam'. Their actions did not match their words. My actions matched my words, I said BTC is an Idea, It is literal Truth, nothing more nothing less, its lowest use case is 'money'.....i am not wealthy either, it was half my 'worth' in dollars. All the other 50ish PhDs and Profesors, said 'you cant do that!'. I placed several 12 word seed phrases, each for 1 coin (about 48K$ each at the time) in open text on our group chat, and said, 'really? I just did'. Nobody would touch it. I said, 'well is it 48K$, or is it free, is it magnetic 1s and 0s, or is it free speach?', most importantly i said, 'how come you people with letters after your name are suddenly challenged by your own ideas of reality?' ;)
One of the most fun experiments ever. I had to make it REAL for me, but not immediately self lethal. I gave away as stated half of my life savings, but allowed a years worth of runway, to not find myself in terrible winter dying. You would be astounded what 'money' does to people. ;)
Only 4 comments and 2 likes. You have over 8K subscribers!! I have probed the same topic for close to 20y and my videos do better than my columns... care to participate in a podcast?
Aha, these are just some idealistic models here. But if we actually tried to do them right now, it would totally fail. Either everything would crash super fast, or worse - we'd end up with some scary new dictatorship that thinks violence is okay if it's for a "good cause". History's proved that over and over.
The real way forward is boring but practical stuff: better social programs, eco-friendly technology, recycling systems, making rich people pay more taxes. It's not exciting or perfect, but it actually works in the real world where nobody's perfect anyway
As I pointed out in the article, your proposed solutions are ultimately non-solutions if they aren’t coupled with a fundamental change in our socioeconomic system. For that system will eventually undo them, as it has inevitably done over and over in the past.
I second that, as long as the economic system is in place, we continue to get more of the same
There is no middle of the road because in the greater reality, we are meant to collaborate, and money needs competition to exist.