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RE: The inherent contradiction of RBE style philosophies
Um. The whole idea behind socialism/communism is that with automation & new tech it is possible to remove the need for boring/dangerous/etc work untill everyone is free to do stuff they'd like to. You know, post scarcity and all that. More or less what communism says, is that once you are in post scarcity capitalism is unnecessary, but capitalism could take us there (I think this is actually what Marx said o.0)
Full automation is the only way to achieve this. You know, there is even that term "cyber communism".
RBE is Resorce based economy?
Technological unemployment is only a problem when you have to depend on money for survival,and you get money from conventional work. If you don't have a source of income then unemployment sucks! :->
Yes, you are missing my point though. Technological unemployment is a core tenet of marxist derived systems. It comes from labor union/syndicalism (the underpinning of fascist socialism). It is rooted deeply in the 'Luddite' mentality.
The thing you are missing about automation is that it inherently disruptive to labor. Every new machine that increases productivity can eventually cause displacement of jobs in a market. On the other hand, thanks to Greshams's law, it tends to be that the drop in price of something leads to more consumption, which does balance things out.
But the thing you are missing about this 'elimination of money' nonsense, is that it is only and solely possible to determine what is productive and what is not, by the money in money out ratio. If it's below 1, you are operating a charity. If it is only 1, you cannot improve your system and you become vulnerable to not being able to adapt to competitors grabbing more customers that you can't without changes.
Money enables simpler accounting of inputs and outputs, and the changes between what these are in a given activity are indicators of change in demand and supply. It acts as a store of past increase of value that can be accumulated in order to make improvements in operations. You can't do commerce without money, and as soon as you start talking about barter exchange (which will make me pull a silly face), you forget that if everyone also trades relatively worthless, rare tokens for other things, and then can exchange them with others to get something else. REALLY! Can I just scream now? Money is an item that is valued for its being accepted by other people as a means of doing an exchange without the direct arising of a 'coincidence of needs'. This is what makes barter a weak system and why eventually money arises. It allows temporally and geographically isolated inputs and outputs into the system that allows logistics to adapt to getting the stuff where it sells best most efficiently, also - I include here of course labor itself as well, the reason why national borders are stupid.
You do a lot of arguing with yourself, but even that is quite interesting. :-D I have no idea about the 'Luddite' attitudes you are talking about. Pleas elaborate on that.
Yes we do need a unit to measure the effectiveness of stuff, but it is definitely not money. At least not the money as it exists now. As of right now the closest we have to what works are the crypto currencies, because they are based on computational power. What I saw at bitshares is actually very good, as the transactions pay small fee that goes towards the maintenance/improvement of the system.
That is exactly the problem! Instead of decrease in the ammount of work, the current model is based about artificially increasing the consumption. There is that huge industry that exists to promote that. That is my beef with the system as is. I understand value in advertising to reach more audience and inform them about a product. But advertising to create the demand that does not exist? That is weird and parasitic, that is the ammount of effort put into it could be used much more constructively.
But back to the subject of money. One good system that I know of is "Islamic banking", fascinating stuff really.
While this is controversional, another interesting system was "freigeld". As far as abolishing money altogeter, that is something I am not sure about. Anyhow, have to get some sleep now.
'the money we have now' ie fiat currency, is manipulated in supply deliberately and openly to 'stimulate the economy' until eventually it gets all burnt out and then we have a crash, the big guys buy up the fire sale and the cycle repeats. It's a circle jerk. All you have to do is base the economy on money that is not centrally controlled. Then people can see clearly what the interest rate is really, and it regulates saving vs spending. High uncertainty = saving, low uncertainty = spending. The central banks manipulate it so it seems like the latter is always in play, until the last moment the pumping stops working and everyone scrambles for the exits.
Money is the only possible unit of measure in a market. But when its supply rate is controlled by certain groups, they can manipulate the rate to profit at everyone else's expense. Money controlled by one group for their own interests is not a money, but a debt instrument, one which they got governments to force you to use by various means. The beginning of fascism comes from banks controlling governments. This is how they pay for all the violence and this is why we can't have nice things.
It is nothing to do with the simple idea of a medium of exchange. This arises naturally out of barter. And it helps people regulate the economic activity by showing what is wanted and what is not.