At least future generations will know that not all of us were self-destructive, shortsighted fools. Knowing folks like this exist gives me hope.

trade-free.org/

💕

#TradeFree

@aral say this were adopted globally and it was only demand ↔ supply (but no prices).

- how can we use scarce goods efficiently without a price mechanism?
- why would people produce goods that aren't fun to make?
- what would stop drug users from consuming but not producing?

@bjorn @aral

You assume that if we removed money and markets everything would stay the same. It wouldnt.
And no its not human nature anything.

@msavoritias @aral

If the world relied on purely gifts, with no prices or trade, it’d be almost impossible to organise specialised labour to produce goods.

Gifts are produced through cooperation and a larger process. For a tribe built on love/trust in a tiny area with primitive goods, it’d be doable.

@aral @msavoritias @bjorn I can give you many examples, but here's one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Na… . These people save lives all around UK. All are volunteers. Their job is specialized. See a ton of examples here www.directory.trade-free.org/

You can have specialized labor based on volunteers. Even in today's very competitive and trade-based society.

@tio @aral @msavoritias

Almost all the charities linked in that directory pay massive amounts in direct salaries.

Look at their reports for direct salary info:

St Jude — $600m/year
Red Cross — $972m/year
RNLI — £83m/year
Heart — $392m/year

For RNLI specifically, 68% of all their costs are salaries.

Almost all the non-charity examples there are for nonscarce items — software, where there's no additional cost for each additional item produced.

Scarcity is the physical barrier.

@aral @msavoritias @bjorn Of course Wikipedia also pays a few people and for the servers. But we re talking about human motivation here. RNLI, Wikipedia, and the like, rely almost entirely on volunteers. So, millions of humans, doing extremely specialized work, without wanting anything in return. In a society in which the opposite is enforced.

I am not sure what point you are trying to get across? That we can't have specialized work unless we force those people to do those things?

@tio @aral @msavoritias

Good question — the point is clearly laid out in the RNLI report, and applies to all large and complex charities:

"There are a number of specific skills needed to keep such an organisation running as safely as possible and at peak efficiency." — and these are paid staff.

Volunteers mainly carry out the unskilled tasks — fundraising.

No force should ever be involved. When you hire someone, you enter a voluntary agreement to trade money for services,

@tio @aral @msavoritias

Charities are not corruption-free — particularly at global scale, where corruption and waste naturally ensues.

Even UNICEF (mentioned in the Trade-Free directory) have a team dedicated to investigating their own corruption, fraud and wrongdoing.

unicef.org/auditandinvestigati

This is an issue regardless of trade, markets and prices.

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@aral @msavoritias @bjorn They can't be perfect in such a society. For sure. But you will find a lot less cases of corruption in regards to trade-free goods/services than trade-based goods/services. Another perk of trade-free goods/services is that you help everyone unlike a selected few who could trade for whatever you may offer.
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