Since the last post, trillions of dollars have spewed from the US Government's coffers to shore up the collapsing financial system, the auto industry, and other segments of the economy. If all this fails--and no one has come up with a better idea that hasn't failed (e.g. supply-side, trickle-down economics)--it's quite possible that currencies as we know them will be a thing of the past.
If so, what are we left with? Answer: the intrinsic value of goods and services. What's no longer here is a convenient yardstick to compare one thing against another. Conceivably, such a yardstick could evolve on its own as time goes on, but in the short run people with no currency can't buy the necessities of life. People could starve, be evicted, and go naked in the midst of immense wealth simply because we are all focused on the economic fairness that a currency allegedly provides.
The point is that nothing has lost its value simply because we have no way to measure it. In the absence of money, people instinctively begin to barter goods and services, and that's fine as far as it goes. The problem is that we are so conditioned by the presence of money that we would try to make sure that every bartered transaction is "fair", and we will be so hamstrung if it isn't that we won't trade until it is.
This attitude is based on the notion of scarcity. From scarcity comes hoarding. Both are based on fear: fear that we won't survive if there isn't "enough." Wealth, as we normally understand it is a form of hoarding. It is based on the notion that if we put enough of an economic armor around ourselves, we will be "safe." The chink in the armor is capsulized in the saying "You can't take it with you".
All of our notions about scarcity, safety, and wealth are based on the illusion of separate, individual existence. Advances in physics, biology, ecology, and other sciences should convince the most hard-boiled among us the this really is an illusion. As an example, our bodies seem to be the same from day to day, but if one looks at what's really going on from a systems point of view, we are constantly changing: inputting oxygen, outputting carbon dioxide and other waste products of the food that we input to keep the system functioning. I'd have to check the numbers, but I seem to recall that nearly every cell in our bodies is replaced in about seven years. The "body" is a matrix for all this activity. For this to work, the entire ecology has to support it.
Given this fact, the notion of getting and spending have to be called into question. Stuff flows in, stuff flows out. More accurately we're looking at the flow of stuff through matrices, and it's only because we can't apply our five senses (especially sight and hearing) to what's going on in the microscopic realm, that we can't operate from this perspective in the first place. It normally takes holding this conception in mind constantly to not operate this way.
But there are circumstances that push us out this set of attitudes. For instance, how do people behave in emergencies and national disasters? They almost automatically start helping each other. Newscasts always show neighbors helping neighbors in the aftermath of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, as well as man-made disasters such as war, often at significant risk to themselves. Our better instincts demand it, and only the most fearful can resist the urge. People who rescue others, soldiers who act to protect their buddies almost universally are puzzled when we label them as heroes. They always say, "I was just doing what anyone would do."
My guess is that this is what we'd do if confronted with massive economic collapse. We would make sure that everybody has what they need. Our better instincts are to protect the survival of the group rather than the largely illusory individual.
Next post: Redefinition of wealth.
