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@6@possum.city

2026-09-26 20:33 UTC

@passocacornio@tech.lgbt @faithisleaping@anarres.family I think it boils down to: money lets people do selfish things sometimes it might be justifiable (e.g. work a while to save up enough you can reserve an entire cinema showing for yourself) but a lot of time, those selfish things are disproportionately bad it's really hard to imagine human civilization working without something that functions similarly to money, tbh it's possible, but hard without capitalism? sure but without any money at all? very hard it would definitely impact global and international trade and tourism and stuff and remove a lot of conveniences we take as granted, just because they require exploitation to be made

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  • @faithisleaping@anarres.family 2026-09-26 20:43

    @6@possum.city @passocacornio@tech.lgbt My best argument in favor of money is that it allows for indirect trade. When people talk about societies without money, they often talk about bartering, directly trading with each other for goods and services. I’ll do XYZ up help you and you give me ABC in return. But what if I’m the best one to help but you don’t have anything I want? Do I just help for free because I’m a nice person? Do I just help for an IOU? Or tell you to pay it forward by helping out someone else with your means? Or are you somehow expected to get something I need by trading with someone like a deranged video game quest? The system kind of breaks down if every exchange has to be a direct exchange between two people. Money solves this by giving us something that represents pure value. You can give me money in exchange for doing XYZ and then I can go to Bob and give him that money in exchange for the thing that I actually need. It’s actually a really useful concept, which is why humans keep inventing it. Even if you take all the money away, people tend to come up with something that they can use for money. The classic example is prisons and cigarettes. But it also tends to always go sideways and some people end up with more money than anyone else and that gives them power and they use that power to get more money and power. 😩

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