miscellaneous

Not Not Neps [1]
2014-06-01 04:43:53[8 hours ago]

"And as a side note, I don't agree that being motivated by money is an inherently bad thing"

Once you destroy the profit motive, society collapses.

Trio [352]
2014-06-01 09:28:01[4 hours ago]

People seem to think that society collapse is a bad thing. 

Once the new system gets started who's to say it won't be just as good, 
and where would they say it?

Not Not Neps [1]
2014-06-01 12:51:10 [50 minutes ago]

I guess I should change that.

Once you destroy the profit motive, progress grinds to a halt, and society starts to move backward.

Much better.

Once you destroy the profit motive, progress grinds to a halt, and society starts to move backward.

I disagree. Innovation & progress will still continue. Many inventors throughout history have not profited from what they have designed & devised as profit is not their motivator.

Not all society would collapse. The only reason the initial reaction would be for most things to go under, businesses then governments etc. is because most people born or grown around capitalism think money is an all-encompassing item. While it does provide us here with lots of things to do and enjoy and many types of foods etc., it wouldn't mean the end of society, just a regression at first. In fact if we were to calm down our greed we would probably help society far more due to the energy demands etc. So I would say that at this point that the system is overgrown and will continue to overgrow until it collapses. The profit motive is the cause of this and maybe us having less of a profit motive will help us more over time than we think.

I just can´t wait until we see the birth of the Federation of Planets too.

Dammit Benny, that's Star Trek. As a member of Atreides I believe you should have said "Space Guild".

You´re right sir. I´ve been naughty and I should be spanked. By some high-ranking member of Atreides ofcourse.

Sometimes i think you get in trouble on purpose.. Ok you know the drill, go put on your school girls uniform.

People will always want to have more either to not have to worry as much or just because they are greedy. I'm the first one I admit.

Society is a never ending cycle, look at all the civilizations through history. No one is going to change anything.

Many inventors throughout history have not profited from what they have designed & devised as profit is not their motivator.

I agree that saying there would be no progress at all is probably too strong a statement, but I think progress would certainly be greatly impeded without the profit motive. Some progress would still be made for the reasons you point out, but I think the vast majority of society would become unproductive.

There's a quote or something, I forget exactly how it goes, but it's something like "to really kill a man, pay him just enough more than he can reasonably spend, in exchange for him doing nothing", the idea being that without an incentive to work for money, motivation gets sapped. I don't think I'm doing that quote justice though, so maybe someone knows what I'm trying to remember. Obviously that kind of simplifies things because the majority of people aren't purely driven by profit, but hopefully you get the idea.

(Also, in case anyone else is confused about the context of this thread, as I was, this thread was bumped/semi-necroed with the (off-topic) profit motive comments. dragonrose moved the discussion here manually (real forums have this kind of functionality built-in)).

this isn't a real forum O,o

I know this really isn't fair to a lot of people to lump them together, but this brings to mind welfare... and other such systems.

Not a real forum as in not "real" forum software. :)

most people born or grown around capitalism think money is an all-encompassing item

Capitalism isn't about money. It's about value. And yes, value is an all-encompassing item.

Yes but since we essentially got rid of the barter system from a tax standpoint, the only thing seen as value from a government / statistical standpoint is the money value of an object. When I go out and want to buy a boat, the fellow I'm buying it from doesn't say "it's value is fun experiences with my 2 kids and I'll exchange it for the value of you being nice to me", it's "that will be $80,000". Or when I'm poor and say "I'm hungry" it does not mean someone will feed me unless I pay them money or something worth a hard cash value. So from a realistic standpoint it's money. From an idealistic standpoint it's value or worth.

Money is a measurement of value. Just because some things are difficult to quantify use that specific unit of measurement does not diminish its usefulness. That would be like saying not all distances can be measured in inches. Some distances would be very hard to measure in inches, but in theory, ANY distance can.

In your boat example, the seller of the boat would of course not say "it's value is fun experiences with my 2 kids," because those experiences are non-transferable, and therefore irrelevant to the sale. Buying the boat will not grant you the memories of the seller, however fun they might be. But selling it for $80,000 could mean "if you want to have the same fun experiences with your kids, and you consider those experiences to be worth at least $80,000, then we can do business." And of course he won't say "I'll exchange it for the value of you being nice to me," because the value of that is hardly worth the value of the boat.

Now if there was no money, the conversation would hardly be different. It could be "eighty cows" instead of "$80,000," and they would still be two men measuring value against value. Capitalism can exist independent of money. Not saying that I favor such a system, just saying that theoretically, anything can be measured in terms of value (a.k.a. dollars, bananas, casino chips), be it a pretty smile, an aircraft carrier, or a latex catsuit. MasterCard will try to convince you that some things can't be measured in money, but the truth is, the actual price of those items can pretty much be deduced from what people sacrifice to get them.

Now i believe it's neps.

Yep me too now,

Well I'm glad I outed him for you two :P

As for this thread, you have a good argument Not Not Neps. I'd continue it but it would probably devolve into an argument about capitalism versus communism or scenarios about society collapse so I'll just leave it be for now until you want to state your next idea.

Ey if we are able to exchange views, just maybe this debate might be able to end on a rather friendly note. But I totally agree with what not not neps said in his last post

"to really kill a man, pay him just enough more than he can reasonably spend, in exchange for him doing nothing."

click

this is a large problem in NZ, so much so we pay people to think up things like this then actually do this stuff, omahgerd, the NZ govt actually did something?

Anyway, back on topic, destroying the profit motive does not inherently mean that capitalism/money is gone, if every business stopped paying people more for their work than it costs them to rent a house and feed their family then I believe most if not all progress would stop. My reasoning is that most well adjusted individuals are motivated not by money, but by progress itself, for security or having additional prospects for recreation in the future. Nobody wants to work simply to live, unless you are conditioned to accept that, and most people are not slaves, and as I am not Chinese I do not know how this works under a communism, or if this even applies.

Of course as this would never happen I could also add that I believe this would only stop progress for long enough for people to get a new system in place which, similar to the old system, would pay you more than your base requirements cost.