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liberal is not left
(quokk.au)
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this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Memes of Production
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UBI keeps capitalism and thus inequality. It’s a zero sum game where people’s wealth will flow towards the rich, enabling them in future to amass power to undo UBI and repeat the mistakes we have now.
Better solution is to ditch currency and focus on meeting people’s wellbeing needs directly.
You can’t ditch currency. Currency isn’t some grand invention of the state. It’s the direct result of beings valuing things at different amounts at different times. Technically current is using any stand in to ease the trade barrier but colloquially some people use love as a currency. Many kinds of social animals trade and what they trade could be deemed currency.
You can 100% ditch currency, you don’t not need a trade or barter based system. Humans have been operating on a gift economy model for hundreds of thousands of years, currency and trading is a blip in our history.
People are capable of supporting each other without profit incentives.
So let's say I really want to investigate superconducting magnets, because I really like that field and want to do research. I need processed rare earth products that only exist on the other side of the globe.
In your gift economy, how would I proceed to acquire those?
I suspect these policies often assume that either we live in startrek or we’re back to the woods and have no need for superconducting magnets :-/
Since those are the only two ways most Anarchist "economics" can work, you're probably not wrong.
surely no other people have any benefit or incentive to find those superconductors and so no one would be willing to aid you in your research, including people who could get those minerals, right?
Is being flippant part of the economic model or an extra? Doesn't get me closer to those hard to extract materials that are in very short supply.
You shouldn't state this as fact. It's not, archaeologists have been arguing between the formalist and substantavist theories of economic models for decades now. You seem to be favoring the formalist view, but there is a strong arguement to be made that market principles such as supply and demand existed deeper in the past as well.
While there may not have been currency, the historic economics of humanity were certainly greater than a gift economy model.
Yup. Gets even easier once all the emancipatory technology innovations cease being classified, suppressed and secreted to maintain the corporate monopolisation rigged game of kleptarchy. When that stops, obsoleting currency/money becomes a greater viable potential, if not just removes some areas from profiteering. Such things are not cosmic fundamentals. Greedy eyes are on water, air, sunlight.
I imagine quality would improve and enshitification would cease, without corrupt fiat currency driving churn. And [as we currently are, it's an] accelerating churn at that, in a desperate race to the bottom. Unsustainable. Essential vital necessity to move beyond it.
UBI may be a stepping stone, perhaps a step away from reducing currency/money to mere resource accounting, on to greater things yet. But yes, not if left in the hands of the current oligarchs, nor in any such system that so readily gives oligarchs absolute power.
Sublimation out of their rigged game trap may come fast [, or not at all, only piecemeal placatium fakery].
I'm confident that if you waved a magic wand and removed currency, an hour later it would be reinvented via "hey, will you do me this favor? I'll owe you one" -> "You already owe me one. But I guess you'll owe me two? Let me write this down"
Great, now please scale this up to all of human civilisation and society with all of its mind-bogglingly complex logistics and infrastructure, ever changing needs, countless adversarials and requirements for advanced science.
Its a nice idea but doesnt feel very applicable unless the entire human race just kinda has a change of heart.
Okay, there is literally nothing about it that can’t be scaled up except for capitalism being the predominant system backed by violence.
You can absolutely do away with currency if the current mode of production got abolished. Currency itself is a necessity in a society that produces commodities for exchange, which creates rise for social constructs such as value, value forms like money, the possibility for an innate crisis and so on.
The first 2 chapters of Capital explains this, the commodity production system was a historical development rather than something coming out of nature (no chemist was able to find value through microscope), and we can certainly produce things to satisfy needs rather than exchange, with a much lower amount of work hours needed to do so.
No. Currency is convenience and convenience wins 99% of the time.
Yeah I’ll pass thanks, currency and capitalism is killing the planet and us along with it.
Nothing easier than being dead tho I guess.
Can you explain your non- currency economy for those of us without that much imagination?
Does trade still exist?
If so what is the medium of exchange?
How is value evaluated?
Unfortunately it seems that proponents of these systems fail to deliver when we get to practical issues - I'm open-minded enough to consider the thought, but I too have a bunch of questions that seem will go unaddressed.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If one (or a group) of these anarchists is willing to do an AMA, I think it'd be very enlightening for a lot of us. I for one am curious to learn how lots of things are supposed to work under their proposed system. But whenever I find an anarchist in the wild, it doesn't feel like an appropriate time/place to ask such questions.
There are some big issues that are difficult to address, but if someone truly believes anarchy is the ideal system, providing information to help others understand how it's all supposed to work can go a long way. A dedicated AMA can clear up questions, and who knows, maybe even win some people over to their side.
From this side of life, seems true. Can't say the dead agree, but they're not complaining much.
Bring on the convenience of the emancipation by technology, provisioning each and all free energy and energy-to-matter transfer, effectively "star trek replicators".
Star Trek however needed most governments to collapse as a result of WW3 and Vulcans showing up to help rebuild afterwards.
We got WW3 almost covered, just not that sure about those Vulcans ...
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Order of operations matters.
There's always a better perfect solution. If you're not willing to work for something achievable because your special vision for how things should be is the only thing you care about, well, that's why leftists fight each other instead of fighting the fascists that have taken over the usa and are in the process of taking over the rest of the world.
You have 1,000 slaves. Do you accept freeing 500 instead of fighting for all to be free?
Fight for what’s right, fuck compromise that perpetuates suffering. That’s what centrists do.
Do the thing that helps now and work to do the things that help in the future as well. Why would I allow 500 slaves to remain in servitude just because I can't free all 1,000 right now?
Does freeing 500 take 1% of the effort of freeing all 1k? Do the 500 first and then start working towards freeing the rest.
Now, this requires actually doing the second part, but some good actually done is better than all the good wished for but none done.
People get complacent after doing some, it’s always better to do it all than half arse it and promise to come back later.
Plus it y’know actually stops the suffering rather than prolonging it but lesser.
Example, ACA, there's been no real talk from Dems after "compromising with Republicans" to pass that to try and make it better. To maybe go with the original plan of universal healthcare for all and not health insurance for all.
What it comes down to is a matter of trust. For example, let's say there's a strike going on and management makes a generous offer, but it would only apply to the senior employees. If the union accepts this, then the newer employees will feel like the union is only working for the people who have been there longer, and are less likely to take risks or stick their necks out for the "common good," because that "common good" seems to benefit some people more than others.
Now, with the workers divided, they have less power and less ability to resist whatever the company decides. In time, even the senior employees may end up worse off.
However, I do agree with you that you don't have to do everything at once. Small victories can serve as a proof of concept, showing tangible results of organization. But there's a difference between a small victory that's shared or fair and a small victory that only benefits part of a coalition and serves essentially as a bribe.
In the hypothetical of "freeing half the slaves" it's kind of impossible to answer from a purely theoretical standpoint, it depends on the specific conditions. If the level of trust and political consciousness is high enough, then the ones who benefit can be trusted to keep fighting for the others and the others won't feel betrayed or left behind. But if it's a fledgling coalition and opportunists are present, then it's a recipe for the whole thing to fall apart.
Everybody is not equal. Sorry to break it to ya. We can lessen the disparity between highest and lowest income, but there will always be a rift. Some people just don't output at much value as others.
"output as much value" value according to what? To who? To you? Well I don't listen to music or look at paintings so anybody calling themselves an "artist" isn't outputting my definition of value so they should be worse off.
Do you see how quickly that line of thinking can be thrown off? Why can't we just give people food, water, and shelter? We're more than capable.
Nah. It's not thrown off at all. Measure of output is, measure of output. Output of "what", relies on consensus of necessity or interest from the population for what the goal is.
And this will always be the case.
One interest, is food production. If one person busts their ass and sows more seed or harvests more crops than another, they are outputting more. It's simple
And this would be true for any other system whether it be a system of necessity or recreation or art, as long as it's in the consensus of being a goal to achieve.
There is no world where everyone gets EXACTLY the same benefits, that's just an ideological extreme. It goes against natural law. It de-incentivizes any extra effort or discovery.
Plus, it's just fucking boring.
Drawing down disparity is the actual goal. Sure CEOs should not make [insert your multiple here] more money/credit/possibility than the worker.
People round here seem to immediately dismiss the CEO. But the (some) CEO may actually have worked harder, been blessed with more intelligence and organizational skills, and contributed more to, say, maximizing food production so that ALL can be fed more for even less effort.
That should be rewarded in society.
Just not to the ridiculously disproportionate extent it is now.
When there is no profit incentive an individuals output simply doesn't matter.
"Measure of output is measure of output" You know i think you might be onto something with that.
Anyway, food production, what if there was enough people working as farmers that everyone only took four hours to plant the necessary seeds? And if you still needed some kind of individual reward, if you bust your ass and get it done faster you got to go home sooner.
It's funny you call this "simple" when it's only simple to you. No imagination, no big dreams, no thinking outside the box. Still stuck in the confines of the current system.
Okay, we’ll go take your shit take elsewhere bud. If you don’t believe people are equal you might enjoy stormfront or something.
Oh, and there is nothing zero sum about it. That’s kind of the point of a good teade
That’s exactly zero sum, one person gains from one persons losses. I pay/you profit, loss/win.
That’s how currency works unless you’re suggesting we just print money off any time we need to make a purchase.
I can make good shoes. I make bad pastries.
You make good pastries. You make bad shoes.
I make you shoes. You make me pastries. Now I have good shoes and pastries. You also have good shoes and pastries. Everyone wins.
That’s bartering not currency.
An even better system is, you can make shoes so you make people shoes. I can make pastries so I make people pastries. There’s no requirement to exchange, we can just make stuff for people and they can likewise do the same.
That’s a gift economy, people cooperating together for the benefit of everyone.
Currency is an abstraction for all the goods and services you might barter. I can sell you a pair of shoes for 1 currency unit, then buy your pastries for 1 currency unit. The result is the same.
Here's a hypothetical:
I'm in a feud with the person who runs the pasture land. He won't kill his cattle/sheep if it's to provide leather for my shoes. Everyone else likes him and his milk and they tell me to bury the hatchet.
But he insists on ever thicker and higher quality boots because the pasture he "works" is so overgrown and muddy from poor maintenence. This cuts into my ability to supply quality shoes for everyone else so I can't do it.
Of course, I stutter and don't do well with public speaking but he has a silver tongue. I can't even lay out half the facts before he's convinced the town that I'm a lazy parasite and a bad shoemaker; I'm exiled. I will now die starving and alone. The town will waste time and energy wearing through low quality woven shoes, content with the thought that they're not wasting milk cows on that shitty cobbler.
If there was a market/bartering economy:
The mechanism of markets is that the price of goods follows the law of supply and demand. Prices are a universal signal to producers that they should produce more/less of a good.
Without currency you need a mechanism to replace this. Given your previous posts in favour of anarchism, I’m guessing you don’t favour central planning. So what mechanism for determining how much and of what kinds of goods should be produced, do you prefer?
Given I’m an anarchist, I value a gift economy where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing.
How much a person should have is as much as they need.
But how does that work in terms of manufacturing in a global economy? Or are you calling for a return to villages with cottage industries?
I’m calling for an extreme reduction in global manufacturing, because what we do is excessive due to capitalism. But that’s unrelated to general anarchism and follows other branches.
And it works by people organising and planning together for their mutual benefit instead of accumulation of currency.
You do understand that people can coordinate and cooperate internationally out of their choosing right? We don’t need a person up top to tell us what to do and what to send where.