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Mats Kaarbö

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Is There a Future for Money?

In our digital age, where banks and even nations fail through reckless monetary spending and policies, it seems that our monetary system is becoming the big elephant in the room, yes even obsolete. Automation replacing humans seems to be one of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism and may be the demise of the system itself leaving the looming possibility of fascism or military dictatorship to arise and flourish if we fail to arrive at any alternatives.

While some believe taking us back to the gold standard will fix things, and others believe that debt forgiveness is the solution, we hear talks about access/resource based economies, where we simply declare all of Earth's resources as the common heritage of mankind and make goods and services available to all without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude, through technological abundance.

In fact, let's rephrase the question. At what point in the future do you think that our technology will make automated systems possible and allow us to move out of a monetary system?

Topics: cultural evolution education future future technology government money science social change society technology
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    Craig Patterson 10+

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    Sep 10 2012: Indeed, Mats; the most intelligent sometimes destroy their forests, pollute their waters, foul their air and poison their food with pesticides and herbicides.... Certainly no one would be that stupid in the 21 century.... would they?
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      Mats Kaarbö 10+

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      Sep 11 2012: "the most intelligent sometimes destroy their forests, pollute their waters, foul their air and poison their food with pesticides and herbicides"

      That's because the "most intelligent" people in the current socioeconomic system are the economists and they see natural resources and what naturally keeps us alive as an externality. If you cannot profit on it, it's basically an externality. The fact is that the monetary system is totally disconnected with the real world and the preservation of resources. It simply doesn't give a damn. And it's the system that perpetuate this kinda behavior. It's not people that are unsane, it's the system. It has always been.

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