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Comment by jchanimal | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think policy can fix this. The only peaceful solution I can imagine is a general rebellion against the use of money to organize our economy. If you are reading this you are a prime candidate to implement alternatives. Hint: bitcoin isn’t it.

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How about re-implementing unions in mass? When union membership rises, inequality declines [1].

[1] https://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequalit...

But unions are also making business less efficient, so eventually it will be surpassed by an another business, so business will move to country with cheaper labor or will die.

If the business is mainly run by the unionized workers, I don't think the workers would willingly move their own jobs out of the country.

Why don't workers start their own worker-owned and unionised companies if they want to?

They do, but it's not as easy as you make it out to be. There are plenty of co-ops in this country, but they're typically local small chains.

I think the problem is that powerful tech companies aren't started by committee of union stewards - it's down to a couple of motivated people with talent and a good idea.

And a huge dollop of VC money to make sure everything still stays within the network of existing Capital Owners, no matter how “disruptive” these businesses position themselves as

Not necessarily, if the business is a local monopoly, or if the use of unionized labor is enforced by law.

The example of the former are dockers in many US ports (you usually can't easily build another port next to existing one), and of the latter, construction businesses in some US cities, like NYC.

The US is one of the world's largest and most lucrative markets. If these foreign companies want to do business with the US they could be required to allow unions and adopt labor protections at least as stringent as those in the US. Another thing that could be done is to tax companies that want to move their assets or businesses abroad. Do both of these and much of the incentive to move businesses abroad vanishes.

In addition to that pressure, the largely pro-union and pro-labor EU could probably be easily enlisted to adopt a similar policy, thereby locking out offending companies both out of the US and EU markets.

Further, take a look at what happened to the ultra-secretive Swiss banks, which for hundreds of years have held the privacy of their clients sacred, even against the prying eyes of the IRS. The US exerted its influence, and now there's a lot more transparency in even the formerly-secret Swiss banking system. Many of the recent revelations regarding the tax-evading super-rich and what assets they have hidden where have been a result of such increased transparency in the global banking system.

US influence extends far, far past that. If the US decided to become pro-union and then hold the feet of other countries and companies to the fire were they to be anti-union or anti-labor, they could make a huge difference. It certainly won't happen in the current political climate, but it could be done.

The elimination of money would be one of the most disruptive events in the history of humanity. It's likely that many millions if not billions of people would die in the ensuing turmoil and our society as we know it today would cease to exist.

Consider just two critical aspects of our society that require money to run smoothly and efficiently: modern medicine and industrial agriculture. Billions of people depend on them to survive, and the reason people participate in them as they do is mostly for money.

If you replace money with, say, barter, how many sheep or goats are you going to pay for a modern hospital or for a pharmaceutical factory, or the network of roads and airports needed to deliver food and other goods? How are you going to transport all those sheep and goats throughout our ever more interconnected world? At the very least, the infrastructure is just not there for us to switch to barter anywhere in the foreseable future.

Even if we could/did switch, all sorts of new power structures would likely arise and overthrow existing ones, and it's far from guaranteed that the transition will be bloodless. More likely, a lot of people would oppose it and it's not inconceivable that wars could be started over it -- especially as the change would probably not happen globally at once, but some countries would convert to barter first while others will still have money, leading to power imbalances, migration of money and the people who have it, massively influencing the economies, societies, and politics of the countries involved.

If the switch from money is not to barter, then to what? It's good to think about these things, and it's critical that our world change from the destructive course it's on now, but I for one don't see a way to extract money out of the equation without massive suffering.

My own slim hope rests on consciousness change, perhaps through education, increased communication, and maybe even psychedelics. The psychedelic renaissance has begun, and these substances are one of the most effective means of attaining radical changes in perspective and increasing creativity. Perhaps through them some solution that's not yet evident could arise, and if enough people change their mind maybe we could change our society towards a more positive and inclusive model.

Barter has never been how economies were organized, except under duress like a prison camp. If you are interested in the topic I suggest David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years. The takeaway- relationships and reputation among groups of people who know each other have organized economies far longer than money has. IMHO social media should allow us to act like a global village, and villages don’t need money to coordinate.

pfft psychedelics have existed throughout history all around the planet. If and when it has had impact, it's mostly been indirect or accidental. There is a paper somewhere out there from the 70's, which tried to estimate how many important historical figures were using something or the other, and after looking at a few thousand their best guess was under 3%. I think. Can't remember the numbers clearly.

The current circus show will return to some balanced "normality" once the media/social medias bullshit reinforcement mechanism namely the likes/upvotes/views/retweets/clicks/ratings is regulated. This mass overloading of people's minds with information they will never be fully trained to handle will break down soon enough. You can see that breakdown happening all over the place. People are still in denial that celebs like Obama and Trump were propped up by the same mechanism. Not dismantling that mechanism will keep propping up more and more bizarre and inept celebs with best pandering abilities in various power heirarchies not just politics. There are clowns in the army and judiciary who are playing the same game Trump and Obama play.

Removing/delaying/temporarily hiding the reinforcement of people superficial beliefs is the only way sanity returns.

Money seems like an extremely good coordination mechanism to me. Name something that can perform the purpose of money that is not more coercive and less efficient than money.

Money’s problem is its commodity nature. It obscures the supply chain and puts unjust gains on the same footing as useful work. A replacement would make supply chains transparent and make relationships and reputation primary.

I have a pet project along these lines but I’d like to hear other ideas: https://www.wired.com/2014/07/document-coin

I wonder how do you separate "unjust gains" from "just".

Criminal proceeds can be detected and reverted by criminal courts.

If you don’t convert value to a commodity form, but instead trade in representations of the original work, then just and unjust can be in the eye of the beholder. With commodity currency, distant parties never have a chance to know.

Central Planning as a Service?

must be ERC20 tokens then? /s

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