[devijvers]

Actually, it's not financial illiteracy that's killing us.

Image for a moment that we were financially literate, what would be able to do that we are not able to do today and what would be doing differently? Being financially literate would mean we would be able to read. However, as soon as we would be able to do that we would be shocked and we would walk away.

What is killing us is not being able to financially write. Money is a medium that has been designed so that it can hardly be read let alone written. We need to redesign money. Money is a medium like all other media and it can be redesigned.

[rikthevik]

> Money is a medium that has been designed so that it can hardly be read let alone written. We need to redesign money. Money is a medium like all other media and it can be redesigned.

I have no idea what that means. When was money designed? Who designed it?

Money is just something we use so that we don't need to directly trade chickens for laptops. The current financial structure has some problems, but humanity hasn't come up with any better method for exchanging wealth.

[sdevijver]

Define wealth. Money has lost nearly all its capability of exchanging wealth. Of course it was designed: it's a human tool and we designed it. Our current forms of money have hardly changed since 14th century Italy. Me thinks now is a good time for a rethink.

[maushu]

Debit cards come to mind, if only they were managed by the government and not by private entities.

[anamax]

> Debit cards come to mind, if only they were managed by the government and not by private entities.

What govt would resist the temptation to do dumb things with debit cards?

For example, the combination of school locations and laws about how close some people can live to schools means that there are many cities where such people can't live. (The specific category that I'm thinking of is registered sex offenders but there are others.)

Govt means that the majority gets to decide what happens to the minority. What could possibly go wrong....

[scott_s]

Good point, but the analogy falls apart because "literacy" implies being able to read and write.