The Problem With Money.

[Shadow322]

We all think money is a good thing, its what we use in order to buy things, we even think its the world sometimes.

But the truth is that in all honestly its what holds us back as a society.

Money shouldn't be what backs our lives, we shouldn't be asking for something in return.

What we should focus on is not money, but instead we should be focusing on human development and the overall advancement of the human race.

Now, I'm obviously a hypocrite, I love money, my future business plan is to buy several small apartment complexes, fix them up, rent them out, and have a steady income.

But if you read this, you know that I'm right, a moneyless world would seem chaotic and hellish at first, but after people get used to it, it would be awesome.

What are all you thoughts?

[McJobless]

You've never experience the communist lifestyle, have you?

The concept of "Utopia" is a difficult one to muster. Money is a good thing in theory, as it would mean that the people who worked hard would be able to get the higher quality goods which they deserve. Obviously, that doesn't work in our current day and age, with taxes/inflation/debt and inheritance (both of massive amounts of money and debt from the previous generation).

Still, communism, probably the closest political stance to utopian idealism, has a flaw (I had more, but I saw Autolog was down and in trying to get it working, I forgot most of them). You're running on the very border of Fascism if the government is either corrupt or just plain power-hungry...then you're hurting more people than you should be (which is none).

BASICALLY, money isn't the root of all evil, and without it, we'd all be worshiping the hammer and anvil, sitting down to drink our Vodka shots (I do anyways, but I get to chose whether I want to or not) and then all going to sleep so we can wake up the next day and harvest hay. God bless Capitalism.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

BASICALLY, money isn't the root of all evil,

I'm sorry for bringing this up, but there is this one verse in the Bible I can't help remembering that says the exact opposite of that... not that anyone here cares.

So don't go religion bashing because I already know your opinions on it. I have no intentions on turning this to a flaming topic.

[McJobless]

BASICALLY, money isn't the root of all evil,

I'm sorry for bringing this up, but there is this one verse in the Bible I can't help remembering that says the exact opposite of that... not that anyone here cares.

[insert youtube clip from Big Bang Theory were Howard says "You're wrong again, Sheldon"]

Timothy doesn't represent the religious beliefs of the church, else Hillsong wouldn't be scamming out everybody's money every Sunday. That was one of the various letters which holds little relevance to some of the figures of Christianity/Catholicism (Not sure if the Bible is standard amongst all denominations or if there are slight variations) and their opinions from that era (you do have to remember that the Romans introduced their own system of currency, and so it is quite possible that the author was just pissed about having to use roman money).

[Phoenyx]

I half agree - Money shouldn't be the #1 focus. Greed is what causes a lot of problems.

However, if the other option is the government giving me the bare essentials and no way to better my quality of life, then I'd rather work for an income that I can increase than receive handouts.

Ultimately the issue is with abusing capitalism (like some large companies do) than with capitalism itself. There's always going to be a bad Apple (or Google) out there trying to take over the world through economic power. The government can't let those companies do anything they please - there needs to be some responsibility on the corporations part that keeps them from becoming the economic on/off switch. At the same time the smaller companies should have a chance to reach their true potential without being the next potential target in the crosshairs of either those supercorperations or the government.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

@Extreme, I would reply to you, but I don't want to cause controversy, and I already know where it would end without even starting it (no I am not talking about a topic lock), we've been down this path so many times before.

[Cirevam]

I see a lot of WRONG in this topic. I will now act as your Economics 101 professor.

We've had moneyless societies before. Those used barter systems. With bartering, you trade one item for another. The problem with this is that you need a little thing called "coincidence of wants." If you want some item A, you have to find someone who has it who is also willing to trade it for whatever item B you have. This may not seem difficult to you, but remember that most barter systems existed when people were self-sufficient; they were farmers. You could only trade things if you had things, and people typically grew those things. That leads to my next point.

Money allows for the accumulation of wealth. If you're a farmer in a bartering economy, how do you get richer? You hoard more things. Unless you hoard things like furniture or land, what you collect will eventually perish. Money solves these problems since it is a store of value; you trust that a dollar will be worth a dollar tomorrow, and that it's not going to keel over and die like a cow might. Along with store of value, money also serves as a medium of exchange and unit of account.

As a medium of exchange, money is accepted as payment for goods. In a barter economy, if you want to trade pigs to get oranges, and I have oranges but do not want pigs, then your pigs are not acting as a medium of exchange (this is the coincidence of wants problem again). However, if you give me twenty dollars for a bushel of oranges, I might accept if the money you've offered is equivalent in value to the value of the oranges. I can then use that $20 to buy something else I want. Money is basically "pleasure points" since you spend it to get a certain amount of pleasure from a good or a service, and you can receive it from someone because you gave them a good or service (or it's your birthday).

Additionally, it is easier to carry $20 in coins than it is to herd a bunch of pigs so you can buy some fruit. This is another advantage of money; it is a unit of account, which means along with being a standard unit of payment in the economy, it is divisible, one piece of money is equivalent to any other piece of the same given value, and each unit conforms to a certain size and weight. Pigs aren't easily divisible until you butcher them, but then it's no longer a pig at that point. Two pigs may be of the same size and weight but one is worth less because it could be ill right now. And not all pigs are equal in size and weight. Money, however, is all of these things. A dollar is a dollar, and so is a hundred pennies. A gold coin containing so many ounces of gold is worth as much as the amount of gold in it, so if you remove some of the gold then the coin is worth less. And finally, all currently minted coins have the same shape, size, and weight, minus whatever marking they put on them to show where it was minted, if any.

You may be wondering at this point where I'm going with this. I've shown you so far that economies without money are typically not efficient. Not only that, they held back the societies where they were used since you could only trade what you owned. When you say money is holding us back, Shadow, did you stop to think about what money lets us do? Let me highlight some of the things that allowed us to advance as a society.

Specialization of labor. Since money is "pleasure points", I can trade a certain amount of money to get an equivalent amount of goods or services. Does it matter where I got this money? No. I could be a farmer... or I could be an economics professor. But it's hard to trade economics lectures for food or real estate. With money, it's bloody easy. I teach students, their parents give me money, I spend that money on food and a mortgage. Without money, teachers and other non-food producing occupations would not exist because you cannot easily trade a highly specific service in a barter economy.

Meanwhile, money has allowed most of the technologically-advanced world to transform into service-based economies (well, they're technologically advanced because people were able to spend time developing the technology since not everyone needed to be farmers). I'm not going to look up the exact numbers, but here in America, 1-3% of the population produces over 95% of the food grown in this country, and around 70% of jobs are in service industries. What is a service? Any commodity that can't be physically touched. Teaching is one of the purest examples of a service, but television and repairmen also provide services. Where would we be today if we didn't have so many services? Do you think we would we be talking over the internet? Do you think you would be able to travel several miles in a few minutes? Do you think we would have had the Industrial Revolution at all? The answer is simply "no". Money has done a great deal for all societies and saying money has held us back is a truly ignorant statement. You guys aren't mad about money, you're mad about capitalism and its "rich get richer" philosophy... and you're absolutely right. So much of what we know is controlled by a few monster corporations. That's where you need to focus your arguments. Don't focus them on money, because without money you'd be working in a field right now.

[PWNZOR]

BASICALLY, money isn't the root of all evil,

I'm sorry for bringing this up, but there is this one verse in the Bible I can't help remembering that says the exact opposite of that... not that anyone here cares.

So don't go religion bashing because I already know your opinions on it. I have no intentions on turning this to a flaming topic.

The quote does say the love of money is evil, not money itself.

[Shadow322]

Well Extreme. I have to say you raise a good point, when I wrote that first that first post in this topic, I had in mind that idea of a society without a central all powerful government.

I thought that because at no point did I think of a government, it was removed from my thought pattern when I wrote that.

But I wouldn't want a moneyless society to be communistic, or would I?

After all Communism and Capitalism are just words, the first being demonized, and the second being "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

And when you get down to it, I guess I was wrong to jump to the conclusion that money is evil and we need to get rid of it all together, that would suck now that I think of it. But then again a system of barter and money might work. like say you have and old car and you want a new one, you will trade the old car and a price for the new one, the old one after that would be send to a facility that would strip it for all and every useful parts and the rest would be disposed of.

But yes, money does lead to greed and it shouldn't be our main focus, that should the human development.

[Sonic322]

I agree with the about post.

I think the first way we can move away from a completely money based society is to first take advantage of excess.

Now there are lot things that are bad about excess and it is human nature to forget everything good and just focus on the bad. But there are also a lot of good things about excess. First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger. The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

These 2 things would take care of most third world problems. When more third world problems are taken care of then you can focus on improving the quality of life in third world countries.

If every country was about the same as any other then 2 things could happen. One being that wars will brake out for control. The other being that people will be less inclined to fight. If people no longer have reasons to dislike other people then governments will want to be more friendly to each other thus removing things like language barriers.

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology, education, medicine, health, and the sciences far beyond there current levels.

At that point we could focus on things like space and space travel.

Although perhaps I am just thinking about a perfect unobtainable world.

---

I could have talked about religions and how they would no longer be needed in this model world but I wasn't really planning on doing that.

[McJobless]

I think the first way we can move away from a completely money based society is to first take advantage of excess.

Now there are lot things that are bad about excess and it is human nature to forget everything good and just focus on the bad. But there are also a lot of good things about excess. First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger. The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

That wouldn't work in a Capitalist economic structure. You have to remember interest rates and inflation. If we are in excess, we (obviously) have too many goods, and thus the cost of money goes down because it isn't worth what it once was.

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

Smart investors actually use the fluctuations of the exchange rates to invest their money; when the value goes up, they sell, and down, they buy. It's like shares, but a little less risky in some aspects, but taking much longer in others. Are you going to deny them their investment strategy? Moreover, there is no way I'm using your American money ever again...I can see why my Government removed the freakin' 1c coin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology and education far beyond its current standards.

We're already doing well without having to make everyone learn the one language. How would you feel if I was the political power, and I told you from tomorrow that you only speak Latin? Language is an important cultural aspect for many people, and we can't just remove it without making them lose part of their identity as a human.

At that point we could focus on things like space and space travel.

NASA.

Now, this is my economics teacher, for all those who want to learn more about the economy.

[TheDoctor]

Someone posts a link to a bible passage but doesn't know that the Catholic church was probably the biggest bunch of scam artists there was back in the day.

[Sonic322]

I think the first way we can move away from a completely money based society is to first take advantage of excess.

Now there are lot things that are bad about excess and it is human nature to forget everything good and just focus on the bad. But there are also a lot of good things about excess. First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger. The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

That wouldn't work in a Capitalist economic structure. You have to remember interest rates and inflation. If we are in excess, we (obviously) have too many goods, and thus the cost of money goes down because it isn't worth what it once was.

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

Smart investors actually use the fluctuations of the exchange rates to invest their money; when the value goes up, they sell, and down, they buy. It's like shares, but a little less risky in some aspects, but taking much longer in others. Are you going to deny them their investment strategy? Moreover, there is no way I'm using your American money ever again...I can see why my Government removed the freakin' 1c coin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology and education far beyond its current standards.

We're already doing well without having to make everyone learn the one language. How would you feel if I was the political power, and I told you from tomorrow that you only speak Latin? Language is an important cultural aspect for many people, and we can't just remove it without making them lose part of their identity as a human.

At that point we could focus on things like space and space travel.

NASA.

I think you are thinking about it backwards. If there was an excess of food then the value of currency wouldn't go down at all. I don't even know where you got that idea. The price of food would go down because people would buy it all the time. If you had said amount of food and sold it for a high price that less people could afford that you wouldn't be able to pay off your expenses because you wouldn't be making enough money.

You know how American currency isn't backed by gold anymore? You know how it is back by faith in the currency now? Well the people who invest in exchange rates don't know that because I could just as easily say that 1 US dollar is equivalent to 100 pesos, euros, or pounds and with enough federal and commercial faith then it would be true. At least I think it would be. I can't really find who handles exchange rates so I can guessing that people just pull the numbers out of their butts and expect stupid people to agree.

I never said languages would be removed entirely. All I said was they would be needed less and less. People would still be able to learn second, third, etc languages but a global primary language would make the world a much easier place.

NASA can't do much of anything now. Without a space shuttle then we have to send astronauts to Russia and other places that have the capabilities to go into space.

Someone posts a link to a bible passage but doesn't know that the Catholic church was probably the biggest bunch of scam artists there was back in the day.

They actually where the biggest scam artists. If you know anything about the church during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance then you would agree with me when I say they are just terrible.

[McJobless]

I think you are thinking about it backwards. If there was an excess of food then the value of currency wouldn't go down at all. I don't even know where you got that idea. The price of food would go down because people would buy it all the time. If you had said amount of food and sold it for a high price that less people could afford that you wouldn't be able to pay off your expenses because you wouldn't be making enough money.

You have no idea, do you? When a business sees and opportunity to increase their assets, they take it. When they notice that more people are buying more product, they're going to increase the price so they can make more money. This is basic economics. Business doesn't care whether you can afford it or not; it's up to the Government and the Consumer Watchdog (if your country has one) to regulate the prices, make sure that the basics are distributed to the majority at a reasonable price. Tell me, do you see the homeless go into a store and buy Kinder Surprises because "they're cheap"?

You know how American currency isn't backed by gold anymore? You know how it is back by faith in the currency now? Well the people who invest in exchange rates don't know that because I could just as easily say that 1 US dollar is equivalent to 100 pesos, euros, or pounds and with enough federal and commercial faith then it would be true. At least I think it would be. I can't really find who handles exchange rates so I can guessing that people just pull the numbers out of their butts and expect stupid people to agree.

"In God We Trust".

Moreover, you've just proven the depths of your idiocy. The people who invest in exchange rates spend hours calculating all the different values they need, including buying/selling, time-frames and all that crap. You can't say that because each country works with different monetary units; look at Japan and the Yen. 1,000,000 is worth about $100 (something like that, I'm too busy to search up the various rates). If you've never heard of "Wall Street" or the various world Stock Exchange companies (Australia has the ASX), then I guess in your mind that's true, but in real life, it's a completely different way. Shares work on the basis that someone is willing to sell part of their company, and someone is willing to buy. Back before computers were a prominent technology, you literally had about 100 guys in a room on the phone, yelling out the various orders of their customers, trying to find someone who was buying/selling in the same shares. I've only just touched on how they work, but a little more research might help: Google

I never said languages would be removed entirely. All I said was they would be needed less and less. People would still be able to learn second, third, etc languages but a global primary language would make the world a much easier place.

Much easier my ass. The United Nations works pretty well, even with multiple language barriers. Just drop this point altogether, because nobody is going to support the enforcement of knowing a specific language.

NASA can't do much of anything now. Without a space shuttle then we have to send astronauts to Russia and other places that have the capabilities to go into space.

They still have Hubble and Government Funding to do research. You can't just launch shuttles into space and hope one of them makes it to Mars. They have a lot more research to make on the various materials used to build and fuel the shuttles before they can consider engaging another launch.

[Shadow322]

You know what, nobody say the American money is the best, and nobody said English is the best language.

Languages are confusing, that is true, at no point in the future will we have a single language, because the would is to big.

A 1 cent coin is a good this and a bad thing, but when you think about it, its a bad thing, it enables people to set a bulls*** price at .99.

Overall, the world is doomed, its that simple.

[McJobless]

EDIT:

Overall, the world is doomed, its that simple.

Agreed. BRING ON NUCLEAR WARFARE!

[Shadow322]

You know what, nobody say the American money is the best, and nobody said English is the best language.

I say that Australian money is the best, and Russian is the best language, but I'm going to be nice and pretend that you Yanks get to control the world.

We don't control the world, and the sooner us Americans get that through our thick heads that better.

I did edit my post you know.

I don't think any language and money that exists right now it better then any other, in fact a single language and currency would have to be something totally new.

p.s. Can you please remove that quote from your signature, I am sincerely sorry that I wrote that in the first place.

[Sonic322]

You know what, nobody say the American money is the best, and nobody said English is the best language.

I'm going to be nice and pretend that you Yanks get to control the world.

See this is how I know you didn't read what he wrote. Because he didn't say that American currency or the English language is the best.

You somehow understood it as him saying that and found it important to write what you think is the best language and currency and sarcastically agree with what he didn't say.

---

Your time is up. Next caller please.

[McJobless]

p.s. Can you please remove that quote from your signature, I am sincerely sorry that I wrote that in the first place.

Don't be sorry. It was the funniest thing I've ever read. As for removal...

[PWNZOR]

Someone posts a link to a bible passage but doesn't know that the Catholic church was probably the biggest bunch of scam artists there was back in the day.

The Catholic Church? Oh heck yes, they were horrible, with the indulgences and whatnot. However, that does not take away from the Bible itself. And the King James Version of the Bible, the version most widely used today, was from England. The Church of England was not Catholic.

[Cirevam]

First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger.

The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology, education, medicine, health, and the sciences far beyond there current levels.

1) While that's true, I think part of the reason that our current world hunger efforts aren't working very well is because the countries that give aid aren't teaching people how to grow food in whatever environment they live in. Instead food and supplies are just air-dropped in and nothing improves. It's the whole "teach a man to fish" idea, but people keep throwing fish at third-world countries.

2) To be accurate, polio isn't curable. It's preventable, and the vaccines we have are very good. But part of the reason that many diseases stay around is because they keep evolving to defeat our medicines. Why? People are idiots. I think a good number of us on RRU know how "superbacteria" are created: someone has an illness, TheDoctor prescribes them some medication, but they feel better after taking the medicine for, say, three weeks instead of a month. Since prescriptions are pretty expensive in the US, they don't take the whole four weeks of medicine. Whoops, some of the bacteria that were in the process of dying are now okay since you stopped ingesting the thing that was killing them. Now they have developed a resistance to the medication and proceed to re-infect you. You get another prescription, but it doesn't work this time. Eventually this new strain of resistant bacteria gets spread to other people, and a new medicine must be developed. Good job, America.

3) The problem with a single, global currency is that you only have a single economy. If that single economy fails, then everyone is boned. Although the different economies in the world influence each other very much, it's not an all-or-nothing situation. Look at the European Union right now. Those countries are all using the Euro (I think it's everyone in the EU, right?), and when the Euro rises or falls in value, all of those countries are affected at the same time. Meanwhile, if the pound sterling falls, only the UK and its territories are directly affected. Yeah, its trade partners are affected since their imports of Earl Grey and dry humour will increase (since those things are now cheaper if you hold all other currencies constant), but if the UK were to experience hyperinflation or just plain sink, the world wouldn't end. You also have to remember that certain goods are worth more to people living in different areas. I won't go into detail about it, but it doesn't make sense to have a single global price for a good that has high demand in one hemisphere and lower demand in the other.

4) A lot of languages, especially tribal ones, are indeed dying out. Historians and anthropologists are trying to preserve these, but in my opinion, languages should be allowed to die out like the people that used them. Language is culture, and there are cultures that don't exist anymore, not even in books. I see little point in clinging onto the past of a forgotten people that probably had little to no impact on the rest of the world. This may seem selfish, but a hundred years from now no one is going to care about some little village that had their own language and did nothing but scavenge for food and tell a few stories.

[Cyrem]

BASICALLY, money isn't the root of all evil,

I'm sorry for bringing this up, but there is this one verse in the Bible I can't help remembering that says the exact opposite of that... not that anyone here cares.

You've actually understood that incorrectly. You see, money as a material object is not the root of evil. The keyword in that scripture is 'love', the LOVE of money is the root of evil, not money itself. You can practally replace money with any inanimate object.

Someone posts a link to a bible passage but doesn't know that the Catholic church was probably the biggest bunch of scam artists there was back in the day.

I think it's quite well known that they don't follow the bible. If they did, well... Christmas wouldn't exist would be one example.

Money drives the economy, with out it there would be no reason to work.... really there would be no reason to do anything at all except to help people. If there is going to be a bartering system, they might as well just use money.

I heard that there is a group of people(on the radio in an interview) that want to get rid of money... lets see how far they get, if anywhere.

[Shadow322]

First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger.

The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology, education, medicine, health, and the sciences far beyond there current levels.

1) While that's true, I think part of the reason that our current world hunger efforts aren't working very well is because the countries that give aid aren't teaching people how to grow food in whatever environment they live in. Instead food and supplies are just air-dropped in and nothing improves. It's the whole "teach a man to fish" idea, but people keep throwing fish at third-world countries.

2) To be accurate, polio isn't curable. It's preventable, and the vaccines we have are very good. But part of the reason that many diseases stay around is because they keep evolving to defeat our medicines. Why? People are idiots. I think a good number of us on RRU know how "superbacteria" are created: someone has an illness, TheDoctor prescribes them some medication, but they feel better after taking the medicine for, say, three weeks instead of a month. Since prescriptions are pretty expensive in the US, they don't take the whole four weeks of medicine. Whoops, some of the bacteria that were in the process of dying are now okay since you stopped ingesting the thing that was killing them. Now they have developed a resistance to the medication and proceed to re-infect you. You get another prescription, but it doesn't work this time. Eventually this new strain of resistant bacteria gets spread to other people, and a new medicine must be developed. Good job, America.

3) The problem with a single, global currency is that you only have a single economy. If that single economy fails, then everyone is boned. Although the different economies in the world influence each other very much, it's not an all-or-nothing situation. Look at the European Union right now. Those countries are all using the Euro (I think it's everyone in the EU, right?), and when the Euro rises or falls in value, all of those countries are affected at the same time. Meanwhile, if the pound sterling falls, only the UK and its territories are directly affected. Yeah, its trade partners are affected since their imports of Earl Grey and dry humour will increase (since those things are now cheaper if you hold all other currencies constant), but if the UK were to experience hyperinflation or just plain sink, the world wouldn't end. You also have to remember that certain goods are worth more to people living in different areas. I won't go into detail about it, but it doesn't make sense to have a single global price for a good that has high demand in one hemisphere and lower demand in the other.

4) A lot of languages, especially tribal ones, are indeed dying out. Historians and anthropologists are trying to preserve these, but in my opinion, languages should be allowed to die out like the people that used them. Language is culture, and there are cultures that don't exist anymore, not even in books. I see little point in clinging onto the past of a forgotten people that probably had little to no impact on the rest of the world. This may seem selfish, but a hundred years from now no one is going to care about some little village that had their own language and did nothing but scavenge for food and tell a few stories.

I must give you a round of applause my good man, you have made a very good and logical point.

1. This makes so much sense, as long of we keep giving them the food, world hunger will continue. People say that what we do now helps and it does, but its not solving anything, we need to teach the people in those areas how to plant and grow their own food, only after that will things really start to get better.

2. People need to realize that even after they feel better, they should always continue their medication until its all gone, or else the exact this you said might happen, and I'm pretty sure it have already happened before.

3. While I don't totally understand what your talking about I have to ask, what it work it there were only 6 world economies, 1 for each continent?

4. You are completely right. Why are we wasting our resources writing down 2 pages of information about a civilization that didn't do anything remotely important and was only around for like 4 months? I know that humans naturally want to know everything we can about everything, but the truth is, that's pretty much impossibly, there will always be something in the past and future that we just can't figure out.

But I reiterate, I give you a round of applause.

[Sonic322]

First of all life would be far easier if there was a global excess of food and clean drinking water. The price of food would be able to drop and people wouldn't have to spend so much money to stop world hunger.

The second way would be to have an excess of medicines to stop and eradicate diseases that really shouldn't even exist anymore in the modern world. I mean most diseases like the polio and diseases that were before it have cures today but they are still around. Why?

A single global economic system would eventually emerge allowing global trading without the need for exchange rates. When all the worlds people are able to use the same currency and get the same goods as everyone else then multi-part global governments can rise and a new era of human development can begin.

The many languages of the world would be needed less and less until a single language be used globally. Without language barriers to stop human development then scientists and educated people would be able to come together to improve technology, education, medicine, health, and the sciences far beyond there current levels.

1) While that's true, I think part of the reason that our current world hunger efforts aren't working very well is because the countries that give aid aren't teaching people how to grow food in whatever environment they live in. Instead food and supplies are just air-dropped in and nothing improves. It's the whole "teach a man to fish" idea, but people keep throwing fish at third-world countries.

2) To be accurate, polio isn't curable. It's preventable, and the vaccines we have are very good. But part of the reason that many diseases stay around is because they keep evolving to defeat our medicines. Why? People are idiots. I think a good number of us on RRU know how "superbacteria" are created: someone has an illness, TheDoctor prescribes them some medication, but they feel better after taking the medicine for, say, three weeks instead of a month. Since prescriptions are pretty expensive in the US, they don't take the whole four weeks of medicine. Whoops, some of the bacteria that were in the process of dying are now okay since you stopped ingesting the thing that was killing them. Now they have developed a resistance to the medication and proceed to re-infect you. You get another prescription, but it doesn't work this time. Eventually this new strain of resistant bacteria gets spread to other people, and a new medicine must be developed. Good job, America.

3) The problem with a single, global currency is that you only have a single economy. If that single economy fails, then everyone is boned. Although the different economies in the world influence each other very much, it's not an all-or-nothing situation. Look at the European Union right now. Those countries are all using the Euro (I think it's everyone in the EU, right?), and when the Euro rises or falls in value, all of those countries are affected at the same time. Meanwhile, if the pound sterling falls, only the UK and its territories are directly affected. Yeah, its trade partners are affected since their imports of Earl Grey and dry humour will increase (since those things are now cheaper if you hold all other currencies constant), but if the UK were to experience hyperinflation or just plain sink, the world wouldn't end. You also have to remember that certain goods are worth more to people living in different areas. I won't go into detail about it, but it doesn't make sense to have a single global price for a good that has high demand in one hemisphere and lower demand in the other.

4) A lot of languages, especially tribal ones, are indeed dying out. Historians and anthropologists are trying to preserve these, but in my opinion, languages should be allowed to die out like the people that used them. Language is culture, and there are cultures that don't exist anymore, not even in books. I see little point in clinging onto the past of a forgotten people that probably had little to no impact on the rest of the world. This may seem selfish, but a hundred years from now no one is going to care about some little village that had their own language and did nothing but scavenge for food and tell a few stories.

1) I agree. All we do is sent food over and then don't do anything else. I mean the only people that claim to help are missionaries and all they do is tell you to stop believing in everything you know and believe in God and the Bible. That's not really helping anyone at all.

2)Yes people are stupid and don't follow directions but I was really talking about the diseases and such that can be prevented with a shot or a pill. I mean the more and more curable diseases we get rid of then people can focus more on deceases like HIV and cancer.

3) While I agree that a singles currency does sound like a bad idea when you look at it that way but I also think that there are to many world currencies.

4) I agree with you 100% If I go to Africa or the Amazon and find a tribe native who have never seen a modern human then by all means we should come in and try to preserve their culture and language but at the same time why don't we bring them into the modern era? I mean the Church use to only use Latin and everything was written in Latin and Latin dominated the world. Then the end of the Middle ages and the Renaissance came by and people said, "We don't know how to read, write, or speak Latin. Latin is a hard language to understand. Why don't we just speak in vernacular?" And they did and now Latin is a dead language that people try to learn about. Why? If it was so hard and you are NEVER EVER going to use it EVER then why make a huge deal about it? So a lot of old books and stuff can't be read anymore? Big deal. The church has all of them safely and meticulously stored in the Vatican's library and the church isn't ever going to let the public in there because of whatever reason they have. I mean their scapegoat is the phrase, "It's gods will." and when the printing press was invented then they didn't want people to actually read the now easily available and affordable bible because they want to control people instead of reading and thinking for themselves. So if the church are the only people that will be able to read stuff like Latin then let them. We will be to busy moving forward as the planet.

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While I don't totally understand what your talking about I have to ask, what it work it there were only 6 world economies, 1 for each continent?

There would have to be 7 for all 7 continents. I can't tell if you are excluding Antarctica because no one lives there or are grouping North and South America together like most ignorant people outside of America are taught.

[Fluffy Cupcake]

1) I agree. All we do is sent food over and then don't do anything else. I mean the only people that claim to help are missionaries and all they do is tell you to stop believing in everything you know and believe in God and the Bible. That's not really helping anyone at all.

They don't help with worldly issues, they help with spiritual issues.