Identifying the inherent problems of a monetary system

[IAchilleasI]

Right, so you're never going to tell us what your solutions are then, because you're never going to get consensus that what you listed are valid problems.

 

Basically, yes. If I don't see something as a problem, why on earth would I want a solution? . I was somewhat disheartened when you said this, but your following arguments are exactly what I intended to engage in; developing a train of thought.

 

Take "Planned obsolescence" for example. It's virtually impossible to build something which never needs updating / maintaining / replacing. Take something as simple as the pencil. After a certain amount of time you will need to spend money on a new one. Or at the other end of the scale, an aircraft - everytime it is used, the structure is stressed, and after an amount of time, it will literally rip itself apart. And none of those options allow for when the original product itself becomes unuseful because of alternatives that have been developed.

 

All of what you say is true, although the pencil is irrelevant to planned obsolescence because it is a depletable resource compared to, say, a mobile phone (unless there was a way to extract graphite from paper ). There is no technological or evolutionary zenith. But let's take your example of a plane. During the production of its parts, the company that makes them will look for the cheapest possible materials to use in order to cut down on its costs. It will certainly maintain a standard (so I'm not saying that they'd make parts out of paper) but it will aim for the cheaper option nonetheless, in order to make it affordable for itself and potential buyers.

 

Nowadays, it is possible to facilitate interchangeable parts by creating a platform on which different components of a product can be replaced with improved versions or even by fixing and updating the existing ones, something like the motherboard of a computer. Under the current circumstances however, it is cheaper to completely replace a product with a new one, instead of paying to repair the old one. The reason for that is to maintain cyclical consumption. Nevermind the economic consequences, think of the amount of waste that is created as an outcome of this.

 

Then there's "Technological unemployment". Sadly, human beings are unreliable, especially when it comes to doing mundane repetitive difficult actions, like soldering components on to a circuit board. Machines on the other hand are very very good at doing that. Humans are very good at doing things which need decisions making / or that aren't repetitive or predictable, something machines are bad at. And that's not to mention the equipment we have today, designed by humans, but that would be completely impossible for a human to build themselves or as part of a team.

 

Again agreed 100%. You might have interpreted what I said as "Machine are bad, because they're stealing our jobs, so let's get back to farming the land", when in fact what I'm saying is that the obsolescence of repetitive, meaningless, counter productive and sometimes dangerous jobs is a milestone in the evolution of human civilisation and should be fully taken advantage of. A system however that necessitates you have a job if you wish to survive and then machines step in all of a sudden and you become redundant as a result, isn't a very sustainable system.

[IAchilleasI]

Given the choice between two washing machines, one which will probably need replacing in 4 years costing £800, or one which will last forever which costs £100,000 (because of the increased design, material and manufacturing costs), which one would you choose?

 

Thank you for going to such great lengths to prove my point. Technology is artificially held back as a result of the monetary system. We have the resources, the technological capacity, the scientific know-how, but we don't have enough pieces of paper to "buy" it! Doesn't that seem a tad insane to you? Not to mention how environmentally irresponsible it is to keep producing all this crap that ends in a landfill in some third world country.

 

Let's say hypothetically a technology is developed that renders fossil fuels obsolete and is so abundant that no company could charge for it, at least not as much as they charge for oil. Do you find it completely unfeasible that the oil industry would attempt to suppress it?

[IAchilleasI]

It's just that for the first time it's starting to come home to roost with an ever inflating number of people. That's why attention is beginning to be paid by the lower orders who it will affect most. Hence the different groups who are trying to raise awareness.

 

This is exactly why I don't like to tie myself down to an organisation or group because these are understandings that are shared by so many of them. I just can't think of a single name/adjective that would give people an accurate idea of what I associate myself with.

[Jim Graham]

These are but some of the identifiable problems that exist today. I could add more, but this post is long enough. I look forward to your feedback.

 

I think it's easy to pick fault with a system that has developed over thousands of years and works reasonably well, as evidenced by the population growth continuing to be sustained?

 

What is not so easy is to identify a system that will work equally well and that, more importantly, can be implemented. The people who complain about the system tend to be the ones who are at the bottom end.

 

We can all be dissatisfied with the current system but have you actually got any ideas or is this just another albeit eloquent grumble about not being given enough of what other people have earned?

[dosxuk]

All of what you say is true, although the pencil is irrelevant to planned obsolescence because it is a depletable resource compared to, say, a mobile phone (unless there was a way to extract graphite from paper ). There is no technological or evolutionary zenith. But let's take your example of a plane. During the production of its parts, the company that makes them will look for the cheapest possible materials to use in order to cut down on its costs. It will certainly maintain a standard (so I'm not saying that they'd make parts out of paper) but it will aim for the cheaper option nonetheless, in order to make it affordable for itself and potential buyers.

 

But in the example of a plane, if you use stonger, more wear resistant metals for the body, then you add weight. Add enough weight and the plane won't be able to take off.

 

Modern aircraft use aluminium and titanium. Steel is much stronger, but weighs so much more that it means the plane loses it's point of existence. It's not a plane if it doesn't fly.

 

We don't yet have a metal which is both strong, and light, and resistant to constant movement (such as caused by the repeated pressurisation of an aircraft), affordable, and doesn't need constant maintainence and eventual replacement. It's not companies choosing not to use those materials - they simply don't exist.

 

Nowadays, it is possible to facilitate interchangeable parts by creating a platform on which different components of a product can be replaced with improved versions or even by fixing and updating the existing ones, something like the motherboard of a computer.

 

The oldest computer in my room now is a 486 from 1994. It uses ISA 8-bit expansion ports, and can take a maximum of 16MB of memory. While I can still get upgrades for that computer (from ebay), even if I upgraded everything to it's design limits, my mobile phone will still be more powerful. It would be impossible to add, say, a TV Tuner card to this computer, because the design of it (modern for it's release) simply can't cope with the amount of data being passed.

 

Therefore, keeping equipment so that they can be repaired / updated by replacing small components and parts either requires us to abandon any future progress or development with that equipment, or to have a very very clever designer who can forecast exactly what that equipment may need to do in the future.

 

Under the current circumstances however, it is cheaper to completely replace a product with a new one, instead of paying to repair the old one. The reason for that is to maintain cyclical consumption. Nevermind the economic consequences, think of the amount of waste that is created as an outcome of this.

 

There are numerous reasons for having to replace the whole thing rather than a part. "cyclical consumerism" is only one small one of them. The most common reason is retailers wanting to push a replacement because it makes them more money and is easier than replacing / repairing an individual part.

 

Again agreed 100%. You might have interpreted what I said as "Machine are bad, because they're stealing our jobs, so let's get back to farming the land", when in fact what I'm saying is that the obsolescence of repetitive, meaningless, counter productive and sometimes dangerous jobs is a milestone in the evolution of human civilisation and should be fully taken advantage of. A system however that necessitates you have a job if you wish to survive and then machines step in all of a sudden and you become redundant as a result, isn't a very sustainable system.

 

I'm not following. You're not advocating we stop using machines to do jobs which humans can't do (or do badly), but using machines which replace humans to do jobs that they can't do (or do badly) is a bad idea and unsustainable. That sounds a lot like having your cake and eating it to me.

[dosxuk]

Thank you for going to such great lengths to prove my point. Technology is artificially held back as a result of the monetary system. We have the resources, the technological capacity, the scientific know-how, but we don't have enough pieces of paper to "buy" it! Doesn't that seem a tad insane to you? Not to mention how environmentally irresponsible it is to keep producing all this crap that ends in a landfill in some third world country.

 

No. Because somebody, somewhere is having to mine the ores needed to make the metals to build the products. Modern electronics contain some of the rarest metals found on the planet, which requires an immense amount of man power to get them out of the ground and into a usable state.

 

Then there's the design work, and test work, all done by people who will have spent years learning their trade. And the people who build the product, who will have to be at the top of their trades to build something with an infinite life.

 

Unless you scrap the whole idea of money (which you didn't list as one of your issues in your OP), then the more work involved in the design and production of a product, the more money it will cost to purchase. It's up to you as the consumer to decide whether the increased cost outweighs the fact that you or your decendants won't need to replace it.

 

Let's say hypothetically a technology is developed that renders fossil fuels obsolete and is so abundant that no company could charge for it, at least not as much as they charge for oil. Do you find it completely unfeasible that the oil industry would attempt to suppress it?

 

The oil industry may well try and supress it, but I'm sure there will be many more people who manage to market such a product in a way that they can make money. That's the thing about capitalism - big developments are very difficult to keep under wraps because there's always somebody wanting to steal even a fraction of your profits, and if there's something which competes and costs less, it will be produced.

[IAchilleasI]

I think it's easy to pick fault with a system that has developed over thousands of years and works reasonably well, as evidenced by the population growth continuing to be sustained?

 

Sure, but will it continue to sustain us indefinitely?

 

What is not so easy is to identify a system that will work equally well and that, more importantly, can be implemented. The people who complain about the system tend to be the ones who are at the bottom end.

 

Agreed, it is not easy and we should therefore invest more of our time in identifying this step forward, rather than applying patchwork in order to temporarily "repair" it.

 

When you say bottom end, you mean those with the least money? Well, since they're not benefitting from it of course they would be disaffected by it. There are others and have been others however, who belong to higher classes of society who have also realised these flaws.

 

We can all be dissatisfied with the current system but have you actually got any ideas or is this just another albeit eloquent grumble about not being given enough of what other people have earned?

 

Whenever I see a strawman argument on this forum, I bang my head against the wall. I am near to developing a concussion. I suppose that you and others are understandably highly suspicious that I do not have any solutions, but this isn't the purpose of this thread. I only created this thread as a precursor to that.

[IAchilleasI]

When an incentive is created to shorten the lifespan of products, this leads to the realisation that product efficiency, sustainability and preservation are in conflict with economic growth.

 

But in the example of a plane, if you use stonger, more wear resistant metals for the body, then you add weight. Add enough weight and the plane won't be able to take off. Modern aircraft use aluminium and titanium. Steel is much stronger, but weighs so much more that it means the plane loses it's point of existence. It's not a plane if it doesn't fly. We don't yet have a metal which is both strong, and light, and resistant to constant movement (such as caused by the repeated pressurisation of an aircraft), affordable, and doesn't need constant maintainence and eventual replacement

 

A highly technical point which, while interesting, is irrelevant to what I'm arguing. I did say that companies have to produce products to a certain standard and since making steel is against the laws of aeronautics it's out of the question. You can get mired in all sorts of examples of whether a superiour material exists but is never used. For example, titanium or aluminium could be used instead of plastic in electrical components for better protection and thermal conductivity with a negligible weight difference. Maybe instead of companies installing smart chips on ink cartridges to stop them from recognising third party ink, they could allow you to easily refill them without having to buy another one. Look at clothing, where we are enforced to change our appearance and buy new clothes because of the latest "fashion". Look at software, where you are forced to upgrade to the latest version because the developer stopped supporting the previous versions. Look at the automotive industry, where parts are discontinued from production after a few years. From the mobile phone industry, Apple is one of the most vulgarly obvious, with annual releases of the more or less same device, while dropping support for previous models. There are more examples if you're still unconvinced.

 

The oldest computer in my room now is a 486 from 1994. It uses ISA 8-bit expansion ports, and can take a maximum of 16MB of memory. While I can still get upgrades for that computer (from ebay), even if I upgraded everything to it's design limits, my mobile phone will still be more powerful. It would be impossible to add, say, a TV Tuner card to this computer, because the design of it (modern for it's release) simply can't cope with the amount of data being passed.

 

You are describing technological progress which is completely different.

 

There are numerous reasons for having to replace the whole thing rather than a part. "cyclical consumerism" is only one small one of them. The most common reason is retailers wanting to push a replacement because it makes them more money and is easier than replacing / repairing an individual part.

 

This made me laugh because you say cyclical consumption is only one small part of the reason and then you go on to describe the most common reason, which is pretty much a definition for cyclical consumption

 

I'm not following. You're not advocating we stop using machines to do jobs which humans can't do (or do badly), but using machines which replace humans to do jobs that they can't do (or do badly) is a bad idea and unsustainable. That sounds a lot like having your cake and eating it to me.

 

No, I'm advocating machines do all the jobs they do better than humans, and humans do the jobs they do better than machines.

[Squiggs]

You have confused consumerism with cyclical consumption. Consumerism means the ever increasing consumption of goods and services by a populace. Cyclical consumption denotes the constant migration of money from the hands of the employer to those of the employee and vice versa. When contrasted with technological unemployment for example, the circulation of money and hence consumption comes to a halt.

 

The big clue in my post was in my reference to collectivised areas of Spain rendering any further discussion about employers and employees redundant

[Jim Graham]

 

During the production of its parts, the company that makes them will look for the cheapest possible materials to use in order to cut down on its costs. It will certainly maintain a standard (so I'm not saying that they'd make parts out of paper) but it will aim for the cheaper option nonetheless, in order to make it affordable for itself and potential buyers.

 

Nowadays, it is possible to facilitate interchangeable parts by creating a platform on which different components of a product can be replaced with improved versions or even by fixing and updating the existing ones, something like the motherboard of a computer. Under the current circumstances however, it is cheaper to completely replace a product with a new one, instead of paying to repair the old one. The reason for that is to maintain cyclical consumption. Nevermind the economic consequences, think of the amount of waste that is created as an outcome of this.

 

 

I think you are wrong on two counts there:

 

1. The company will use cheaper parts because the competition will be doing the same or to maximise profit. If there is no competition they can charge what the market will bear and making something affordable is not an issue. Where there is competition they have to charge the same or less to survive.

 

2. The cost of production is often less than the cost of repair. That's because production is mechanised but repair is manual and the cost of labour is usually the biggest cost in the developed world. It has nothing to do with any capitalist plot to keep people spending money. In the third world almost everything is recycled and repaired because the cost of labour is so low as to make it economical.

 

Whilst you make some good points I think you are overthinking the problems and coming up with some ludicrous conspiracy theories when the reality is much much simpler.