qtns understands - you do not.

Translation: he agrees with you on this topic, whereas I do not. Yes, everyone already knows that, Baldur.

You remind me of a discussion I had with a boy I knew when I was in my single digits.

Was he at least good-looking?

He was several years older than me, and had previously lived with his parents at a commune where his father was still living. His father, he explained to me, was very wealthy. You see, at this commune everyone was equal, and everyone was provided for equally from the common production. However, they found that not everyone wanted the same things,

A commune is a small community that does not have access to all the technology we have on a global scale. You cannot create a tiny "socialist" society in miniature, cut off from the global technology and population. You need access to all the advanced technology and mass worker cooperation to produce an abundance for all. When this happens, you do not need to worry about everyone not wanting or needing the same things, because no one would be compelled to consume or acquire that which they do not want.

and they found that not everybody was working equally hard, and there was never enough for everyone

If you try to force people to work at jobs/vocations in which they are not suited for or do not have a talent for, then yes, you're going to get people who only do what they have to do, and nothing more. A global system of social ownership would ensure everyone received meaningful work that suited their talents and temperament, and the "just take anything you can get" mentality of capitalism that causes so many people to hate their jobs would be eliminated. The unpleasant jobs could be entirely automated, and those which cannot could at least have technology installed to make the job less unpleasant. There are always those who are efficient at doing maintenance jobs and do not mind doing them, and in a socially owned economy the work day and work week would be considerably less than it is today, since everybody who was able-bodied would be able to work.

Of course there was never enough for everyone on a commune, because it was cut off from the majority of the global population and the technology required to mass produce and thus provide an abundance for everyone.

- so they made up some certificates to indicate how much work each person had performed, which could be redeemed for what had been commonly produced based on how much time it had taken to produce it. What was even better, these certificates could only be used within the commune to assure that this value never left the commune and therefore supported the community. Now, this still had some problems, because they soon discovered that everyone wanted to do the easy, pleasant work, but no one wanted to do difficult or unpleasant work

See above regarding unpleasant work.

Also, people with a natural talent and inclination for a certain job would enjoy the opportunity to do it and build their full potential, no matter how hard it was. I know plenty of people, including myself, who routinely do very hard work and who work well over 40 hours per week doing it despite the fact that the job wasn't lucrative under the capitalist system. Why? Because we enjoy it, it's our passion, and we realize how important to society the job is, which provides us with further incentive. If you assigned me a job sweeping out the hen house in a commune, then yes, you would have me do just enough to get the job done, and with a lot of complaining on my part because it's not something I'm suited for. If you got someone whose ability and temperament was suited to maintenance, however, you could expect a much more efficient job and even a sense of pride at doing it well, and I have known many people who have. Of course, capitalism doesn't allow for that, and what you're describing about the commune was not Marxian socialism at all.

- so they decided that they would give twice as many certificates to anyone who would do difficult or unpleasant work. His father had become very wealthy by taking out the garbage!

How nice if that's how it worked under capitalism. I once had a job doing highly unpleasant but important work: literally in a garbage dump picking up excess material and dispensing of it, all while avoiding medical supplies and dead animals. Nobody there, including workers who had been there for years, were making a lot of money doing it.

His father had a large pile of these certificates that he had never used, because there was nothing the commune produced that he wanted to redeem them for, but he could redeem them any time he liked!

What did he expect at a small commune that lacked the productive capacity to produce an abundance for all, since it was sheltered from the outside world? A commune is more suited for "back to nature" types who are individually suited to such an environment. I wouldn't be, and clearly that boy's father turned out not to be.

I pointed out to him that the commune had reinvented money, except that it was worse because it was worthless outside the commune. He was not happy with me for saying that, and told me I just didn't understand.

I understand why that wouldn't appeal to several people. Apparently this boy you knew thought everyone was cut out for that lifestyle.

I learned several things that day - one of which was that wisdom is independent of age.

OMFG, something we agree on! In a thread dealing with one of our economic pissing matches! And here you think miracles do not actually exist? :-P

I don't know if his father ever figured out where they had gone wrong (I never met the man).

That's too bad, as I'm sure he would have loved to have met you! As for where they had gone wrong: 1. You cannot produce an abundance for all in such a tiny community; 2. Not everyone was suited for that lifestyle, and I'm not sure what that man's expectations were going in.

I have read that that commune made considerable modifications over the years, and as a result it is one of the few from that era that has survived and even prospered to a small degree - but along the way the population has changed entirely several times over - none of the founders remain.

Not surprising, for the reasons I mentioned.

I know that qtns, I, and others have explained these things to you often enough, so I am doubtful that you will ever understand what we are saying.

Maybe it's not that I don't understand, but rather than I understand too well and simply do not agree based on my own observations of the system and experiences within it that are not faith-based.

At this point I make these points for others who may come across our conversations more than for you

Which is precisely my intention as well, albeit long prior to this point. You do not want to give up your reverence for a system based on selfishness and greed, along with the powerful and privileged few who benefit from it. I do not need explanations from you nor anyone else to understand the system, but I will make sure to do my share to let others know of the alternative to what you support, and also to counter the many times you attribute what I support to something entirely different which I have never supported.

- and I just remember that you are intelligent and capable in other fields.

For what it's worth, I consider you equally hopeless in this particular field. It's not that you cannot understand the system for what it is, but you simply refuse to do so because you cannot get past the appeal of power and the ability of capitalism to bequeath it to a small number of people whom you identify with to feel powerful by proxy.

I believe that everyone has at least one blind spot, and I know I have a few areas where I have to trust the opinions of others. I figure economics is your chief blind spot, and I suspect you think the same about me.

Let it no longer be a mere suspicion!

I would hope that you would consider how exactly to make your system work -

I'm confident that the international working class can indeed do so, and also excel at it.

how to make sure that everyone took what they needed but no more,

There would be no incentive to horde things, because economic insecurity and the fear of want would no longer exist. There would be no perceived need to grab more than a week's supply of anything off the shelf in a distribution center, and since all would have access to 3-D printers we could make enough of what we needed right at home. Sharing resources such as the upcoming fully automated cars would also prevent over-consumption.

how to make sure the producers knew how much of which goods to make,

There are numerous ways to use computer technology to send out algorithms and census letters to help determine this. Mistakes will be made, yes, but every mistake will be learned from and things improved upon from there.

how to get the goods from where they were produced to where they were needed,

Distribution would be carefully planned, and with no fiscal obstructions. And as I said, the increasingly advanced technology of 3-D printers would allow workers to simply assemble needed items in the home. Now I know if Dante was in this argument, he would dismiss 3-D printers as "magickal technology," because it had a sci-fi inspiration, but I'm sure you're well aware of their actual existence, and ever-increasing advances in speed and efficiency since the previous decade.

how to make sure workers knew about new products that could fulfil their needs better than the old products,

I'm sure communications and information-sharing technology such as the Internet would thrive quite well in such a system.

how to manage this whole system.

I'm confident in that because workers already manage this system; they simply manage it for a boss class rather than for themselves collectively.

All of these things have significant costs that most people never think about - but at least a couple of those problems are solved by money, because the use of money provides feedback to let producers know how much to produce and where to apply their resources;

Money and a system that runs on it also prevents people from being able to afford what they need. There are myriad ways our information technology of today could be used to tally what products are most wanted and consumed, and what resources would be required to supply them.

and money prevents workers from stripping the shelves bare at the first chance;

The problem is, too often it prevents them from being able to purchase even the bare minimum of what their families require. I have found myself in that very boat almost every time I have ever shopped, and I usually shop weekly! As noted above, there would be no incentive to horde if everyone had complete economic security and knew the products they needed and wanted would always be there and never would their personal "fortunes" ever change due to an unexpected illness or accident, or any concern with being laid off or involuntarily deprived of a job.

and money incentivizes workers to do the work that is difficult or hazardous or unpleasant but really needs to be done

Automation could replace humans working particularly hazardous jobs, or those jobs that were unpleasantly tedious, etc. This would be a bad thing under capitalism, but an absolute boon to a system where the industries were socially owned. And this would be more true in a capitalist society if so many dangerous and unpleasant jobs truly were lucrative, and so many workers weren't taking them simply because it was all that was available at the time.

- which is probably why no society that has advanced beyond the stone age does not have money in some form.

Every society that came into being after the Stone Age and the primitive communism of old ended was because material advances progressed to the point that a surplus was available for a small portion of the population only. It was these individuals who became the first ruling classes, and money and barter make sense in systems where production is difficult, mass production is not possible, and true scarcity for almost everything other than sunlight is an actual fact of life. The first of these class-divided systems, ancient slavery, eventually advanced production to the point (around the end of the Roman Empire) that a more advanced system, feudalism, was possible; the latter eventually ceased being progressive and made another more advanced system, capitalism, possible, which was possible by the time the mid-18th century came around.

Money existed in all of these systems because they were all class-divided systems. But capitalism has since advanced technology and productive capacity to the point that yet another more advanced system is now possible, Marxian socialism, and has been since shortly after the Industrial Revolution advanced to the point it did by roughly the late 19th century. Now that we can produce an abundance for all, money and barter no longer make logical sense, which is why for the first time in thousands of years, we can create a system not requiring these things. And unlike primitive communism, which was essentially classless but production was so difficult that everyone had to share an equality of poverty, modern technology will enable us to share an equality of abundance in a post-industrial classless society.

That is why money emerged and had an important role in post-Stone Age societies, and why it's no longer necessary in our post-industrial world.

If you can come up with a better system, have at it - but know that a lot of smart people have tried this before you, and they keep coming back to money.

Intelligence isn't necessarily accompanied by wisdom or understanding, nor does it dispel agendas that preclude such very smart individuals doing the right thing for everyone as opposed to just themselves and a few others. No one, however, has ever attempted to establish Marxian socialism, because it is not technologically possible to establish on a small scale, with only a small handful of people. This is why I'm among those trying to convince the international working class--including many people smarter than me--to get past their strong or residual loyalties to the system they and their great-grandparents are accustomed to so we can move onto the next most advanced system.

You might do well to have a successful pilot project behind you before advocating for a moneyless system.

There has been much discussion of that. Such a system would require the unionization of the vast majority of workers, who would be ready to take and operate the industries for the collective benefit once a majority vote effectively ended capitalist production. Would it be easy? No, but I and other socialists strongly believe it needs to be done.