[einarvollset]

Yes but. If you take “cash” or “money” out of it, do you still agree with your own argument? What if you said “lots of things would be less valuable if nobody could cooperate to build anything”?

Again, arguing in good faith.

[smallbigfish]

Well, maybe. But I've learned that you can't take money out of "it". Even in places that strive to do so. If we could we could actually reach some utopia. Communism would become highly desirable.

[einarvollset]

I think I probably disagree. Hear me out.

1. “Money” = cash. (Hard to argue with that I think)

2. Cash is simply a more efficient means of exchange or store of value than custom IOUs (checks basically) or barter (I need milk, you have C++ code. Durrrr?)

I don’t think you want to take “money” out of anything if you agree that money is the above.

That would bar the ability of people to encode trust or information or relationships into pieces of paper (or gold or code or whatever).

(Don’t freak out: relationships are encoded on paper and in gold every day; eg weddings)

So yeah. I think cash (and maybe debt - as per original comment) might be a very powerful tool. Which we should be very careful with.

[_bfhp]

"The Dispossessed" by Le Guin was helpful for me to think about these problems, which I found went deeper than I thought as a younger person. "IOU"...who is owed? Who owes? Who needs milk?