Saturday, June 18, 2005

Is Anyone This Naive, Really?

Michael Dickinson suggests that we abolish money.

According to his way of thinking, money is simply a system of record-keeping as to "I've got mine," and without it we could save so many resources currently devoted to "Bankers, bookkeepers, accountants, cashiers, salesmen, customs officers, security guards, locksmiths, wages clerks, tax assessors, advertising men, stockbrokers, insurance agents, ticket punchers, slot machine emptiers, [and] industrial spies..."

What doesn't seem to occur to him is that without this bookkeeping, there would be no way to know how much of everything to make, and without a system for accumulating capital, there is no way to get research into the technology that allows us to provide more resources.

In other words, all of the monetary and financial superstructure of our society (banks, stocks, etc.) is necessary in order for resources to be distributed efficiently. If we didn't have them, we would not have the means to make progress os that we would have the goods and services to improve people's lives. To get people out of accounting jobs in order to get them into "productive work" would be like trying to increase cotton production by turning all of the people at the agricultural machine factory into cotton pickers.

The general idea that a lot of liberals have is that there is a pile of goods, and e are taking them. That we are actually creating these goods and serices does not seem to occur to them.

That is all.

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