Hello,

I believe that internally, Asgardians could do away with cash and establish a cash free society. This would go a long way in reducing stress and crimes.

The idea would be to have everything the nation needs for its citizens provided to us when in Asgardian territory (i.e. a space station).

Yes, I completely agree with you. That would be great.

Why not go beyond just "cash free"? We could easily accomplish a money free society if we are technologically capable of having as Asgardian nation in space.

You have the tools, skills, and resources to manufacture luxury product X. I do not. How do you get a motive to build it for me if I have nothing in exchange that you want? (The answer is an RPG quest chain.)

Currency is a way to objectivize value and thereby exchange it in fair fractions and enables two parties to make an exchange where both believe they have gained more value than they have lost in the transaction. Find a way to do that without the problems of money and I will listen.

The problem I see is that in any exchange you need some sort of standard. In a cash society the cash is the standard to allow people to put a value to their goods. So if we are to go 'cash free' we need another way to determine value for exchange. Barter is a great method, but again the values can change. Such as I give you a bottle of milk for a bag of wool, however if I know you are desperate for the milk I might be able to demand more wool from you.

Perhaps something similar to the stock market where goods are set at a value, and then adjusted depending on availability. There are two things I am thinking of. First is if it's a necessity the value stays the same, if it is not it can fluxuate. For instance if it is water, which we need to survive, it does not change value depending on quantity. So if there is contaminiation and water becomes limited people are not suddenly being charged huge values for it. Secondly if it is a want, then the value can change. Similar to the stock market. Where people can see the value of the stocks and buy and sell appropriately.

One of the main principles of economics is that higher demand means you can charge more for it. Even with a cash free society people are naturally going to want to profit in some way because that one way we derive value. Even if we are trying to de-emphasis this, we can't assume such behavior will vanish. And since exchange of goods is always going to happen, even without cash, we want to make sure its not the running principle.

Почему бы за основу для дискуссий не взять теорию Фреско? Ресурсо-ориентированная экономика?

I can make something people need, I give it to them. Someone else makes something I need, they give it to me. Everything is created and distributed freely based on a policy of needs over wants. Everyone who can do a job, does it for the betterment of the people on Asgardia, not for profit or even a basic living, that's provided by the same concept of needs over wants. If someone can't work anymore they be cared for by everyone. That's how communities used to work, it's not impossible to imagine.

I know this is incredibly simplified. But we have to start with a simple idea and build on it until we have a way to make it work.

A needs* based system may work well enough for needs, but wants are what drive an economy. The term for an economic system that provides only the needs of the residents is called "subsistence."

It is easy enough to motivate people to make a functional subsistence economy, even when cashless. People are inclined to share life needs, especially if they are part of an interdependent system where no one can provide all of their own needs without others sharing with them. It is more difficult to motivate people to share goods that are deemed wants without trade and it is even more difficult to motivate people to produce a good that they don't need, that they don't want, and that they will not benefit from either the use or production without trade.

Money is by far the fairest way to trade. It objectivizes value by transducing it into equally valuable components that can be fractionalized as needed. To put it simpler, a pound of wool may be worth a hot meal to you, but it is worth ten hot meals to me, and to barter we must agree on a particular value for both but one that can be evenly fractionalized into pounds of wool and hot meals. With money, we can agree that a pound of wool is worth around $2 per pound based on what everyone else is buying and selling it for and we can agree that a hot meal is worth about $6 per meal based on market prices. Because of the pre-agreement of value based on the value judgements of everyone who is buying\selling wool and hot meals, I can sell my wool to anyone and be assured that the value of my wool is not entirely dependent on the particular value judgement of the person I am trading with and leftover value is already fractionalized into smaller currency amounts.

Money is pre-historic. Humans have always used it, while often complaining of its capricious nature, because it works so well. Societies with low money usage have largely been limited to economies facing long, long term liquidity shortages. The most famous example is feudal Europe, where an insufficient amount of gold and silver forced people to trade with labor, land, and "blackmail", non-monetary goods.

*Needs aren't something that really exist in any material sense. We don't need oxygen, water, or food. We just think that we do because we value living so much. This may sound like navel-gazing, but it is important to remember if we try to implement a "needs based" economy, because while everyone is going to agree that oxygen, water, and food are absolutely essential, the further removed from directly continuing a person's life that the need is, the harder it will be to achieve agreement that it is indeed a need that we are all required to contribute to. Yes, you need food, but why should we give you a microwave? Yes, you need to sleep, but isn't a sleeping bag enough? Maybe you'll go crazy if you don't have any entertainment, but does that mean a TV, internet access, and Netflix?

We all forget, that the start of this nation and the question with the cash-free society are pointing to the space-nation and the space-station(s). I agree with sammwich for earth-based environments, but not for space. Space is empty. So everything we wouldn't think about on earth (like oxygen, water, food or room) is much more worth up there! After a while in space, and a station big enought, these "basic goods" should be safe and many people will work to produce or maintain them. But everyone who arrives after, dont need to work for these goods. All other goods or services will be specified by the people who are allowed to come to the station.

I know, everyone wants to go to space. Thats a great idea. But everyone who will live up there, will use the basic goods and have to provides something in exchange for it. Thats why the first people up there will be people who can maintain the machinery, after them the scientist and explorer. And these "needed" people, will also "want" something. So the next people shall bring something for them to live better and so on.

If the station is big enought, everyone can produce everything, what is needed by someone. Or if it's not needed anymore, we can think about trading for the earth nations with it.

Profit corrupts, and nearly all humans dont know how to deal with money without thinking with the indocrinated capitalism. If you want to explain to one of the constructors of the station(s) that he build this whole system, he and others lived there without money. They got food, water and everything they really need up there, to do there job; that they shall now work for money and pay for everything. This would be selfish und ignorant.

And that's why a cash free society is the only considerable, in my opinion. :)

Friendly regards!

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Then "how things work" should be made to change. It's not an impossible task. There's effort involved, and lots of patience, but it's possible.

Money usage per se is an especially difficult behavior to change. People like to be rational actors and using money has so many advantages, people are strongly disinclined to stop actually using it (there have been innumerable attempts) without an at least seemingly better replacement.

The way things currently stand. Start changing a few variables and the math cascade takes care of the rest. Changing the "right" ones in the "right" way is no insignificant task - but it's not impossible. It's not happening overnight, it's taking a long time to install the framework around which many changes will operate. But it is being installed, regardless of otherwise intent because the current model is flawed and current thinking unsustainable. Resistence to change will simply result in extinction - something recognised by those who have started adjusting.

Things like the three to five year lifecycle on parts is ultimately unsustainable to the economy and the environment. Even with recycling. It's certainly not suitable for deep space travel or habitation. This is going to change, and rapidly. Conventional manufacturing is picking up the devel on this one. Already there is research and development into commercial deployment of techniques and materials designed to last for generations with minimal to no maintainence.

To take something you'd expect to be resistent to deploy such changes consider the automotive industry. A few have already started reshaping and adapting to exist in the future. The rest will follow or be relegated to a wikipedia article. Ofc, they'll squeeze everything they can whilst they can but It's reasonably safe to suppose that in less than a decade, all cars with have self drive ability and few will have manual controls. Currently displayed variables suggest it will be difficult to avoid this senario in less than five years. With the expected improvements in this technology, this fact alone should dramatically reduce the number of slighty dented panels, missing wing mirrors(why would it even have them? camera on rear, display on windscreen), theoretically wear and tear too. Fleets of self drive vehicles from companies like google and uber are poised to offer subscription based car when you need it services that for a lot of people will render the concept of ownership obsolete. The yearly subscription should be less than fuel, maintainence, insurace, tax etc. AI will not only dent new parts sales, as millions of drunkards every year no longer wrap their crappy ford around a reasonably innocent tree - wimmins will be able to park in reverse etc, but also new car sales - in a continual trend of falling numbers. The money will be in parts and servicing. Then it becomes a competition - who can make the best parts. Who's can tollerate the most stress from the least mass and offer the longest lifecycle. Then when competition catches up, for the least money.

This obviously doesn't erradicate the requirement, but it has significantly reshaped the entire industry and other industries are about to experience some equal disruptions. The end product of the net adjustments will be more than one step towards. And whilst this is happening other things can happen.

One by one you adjust all the tiny details until you can stand back and be happy with the big picture you look at.

Planned obsolescence always makes sense at a certain point. To take it to the most ludicrous extreme, no one needs a screwdriver that will last for a hundred trillion years. The final user probably won't have a hand that can use it well, if at all. Short planning cycles are mostly a product of high innovation rates and it's the discount brands that either break before the next innovation or didn't implement the last one. A less extreme example are cars. All non-fully electric cars are going to eventually be obsolete as natural oil supplies get exhausted and alternative sources of energy become cheaper than artificial petroleum for engines. It's irrational to design a car that can run for 100 years in 2017.

Financial incentives are a great way to make people to behave in a way that would otherwise be irrational, like bottle deposits, because they give people a new reason to behave in a certain way.

I didn't say design to span hundreds of trillions of years, just to span generations. This is how you prevent exhaustion of supplies or at least mitigate the effects of. Fully electrical cars could of been about and more prominent a lot sooner - the first person with a practical portable power source for being Tesla - but such technology has been intentionally disfavoured in order to scrape the artificial inflation of the goods value by encouraging dependence.

How is it not rational to design a car that will be mechanically sound in nine decades of daily use and minimal maintainence? Think what a game changer it would be. Especially if it's "clean". The first one to pull that off will find a very eager market. By virtue of "competitor" you are in competition, and the first one to sell them wins. I can't organically design wheels, the bearings and brakes give me headaches. But a lot of things done differently can extend viable service life on most parts past a decade. That alone will make a significant difference. Modular design gives rise to keeping up with "innovation" whilst not actually requiring a whole new car to do so and allowing allowing for flexibility of payload and form.

Financial incentives are a great way to puppet the difficult of thinking, but threats to your very existence is a powerful motivator for change. Ultimately, one of those is going to win, or the problem is going to remove itself as it stagnates refusing to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape. These companies will still covet money, ofc, but that pie is going to be steadily shrinking - and they will need to move now in order to be getting a bigger slice of the next one, which will be in a much more limited supply.

As this mentality impacts all industry, the generalised requirement for continual expenditures will steadily decrease, with schemes like UBI keeping what's left of the companies alive and ticking setting up for an environment where the concept of money becomes quite meaningless once you introduce the vast quantity of resources available in the solar system.