If money was worthless?

[blackchipjim]

Let's imagine that all of sudden money had no value. How would life be for the majority of us.I mean gold and silver all the things that humans have come to place value on. You are what you are and you are only as good as your survival skills (ie. hunting, fishing, growing and preserving your food, making cloth, etc...). How many of us could survive past our few months after world collapse. They give us civilized nations a few months and third world countries longer because they are more accustomed to lower levels of subsistience. If you had to survive the next 6 months without the luxury of buying anything for the next six months do you think you could? blackchipjim

[callipygian]

Originally Posted by blackchipjim

Let's imagine that all of sudden money had no value ... If you had to survive the next 6 months without the luxury of buying anything for the next six months do you think you could?

These two scenarios are very different. Just because money has no value doesn't mean people wouldn't buy or sell - alternate forms of payment would come into play. Bartering, at the very least, or people would use some scarce resource as money (e.g. cigarettes used as currency in prisons).

Commerce doesn't exist because of money; money exists because of commerce.

If people found a way to create gold from sand, gold would become worthless. Salt was once used as currency.

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by blackchipjim

I mean gold and silver all the things that humans have come to place value on.

Thats bizzare - there will still be relative storehouses of value exchange - just the currencey bad - unless you mean Robinson Curusoe type situation. zg

[Sandy Eggo]

Beer. Wine.

Hubby home brews and we have a vineyard. Liquor and those who could produce it were well protected in times long past. Next would would be the suppliers to them: grain and hops producers for beer, and grapes for wine.

And then it would be anyone with beef or chickens as protiens would become the next luxury item. Glad I have 11 acres.

[jack,jackson]

Originally Posted by Sandy Eggo

Beer. Wine.

Hubby home brews and we have a vineyard. Liquor and those who could produce it were well protected in times long past. Next would would be the suppliers to them: grain and hops producers for beer, and grapes for wine.

And then it would be anyone with beef or chickens as protiens would become the next luxury item. Glad I have 11 acres.

Hi Sandy do you have a link to your site. Do you sell wine kits, w/juice?

[jack,jackson]

Originally Posted by blackchipjim

Let's imagine that all of sudden money had no value. How would life be for the majority of us.I mean gold and silver all the things that humans have come to place value on. You are what you are and you are only as good as your survival skills (ie. hunting, fishing, growing and preserving your food, making cloth, etc...). How many of us could survive past our few months after world collapse. They give us civilized nations a few months and third world countries longer because they are more accustomed to lower levels of subsistience. If you had to survive the next 6 months without the luxury of buying anything for the next six months do you think you could? blackchipjim

Just wait until 12/21/2012 and we'll see.

[blackchipjim]

I was thinking more of the total breakdown of the systems. The facts point to without the basics of energy and system supports such as electricity, gas, sanitation, water treatment and the whole nine yards, most of us will be gone in a few months. The total breakdown would take just a generation to put us back in the dark ages. With the infrastructure gone money or diamonds and gold all that we value is worthless. You are correct about the wine and beer and such but food would take over as a barter such as third world countries do. I think you mean 12/26/12 is the day. blackchipjim

[Sandy Eggo]

Originally Posted by jack,jackson

Hi Sandy do you have a link to your site. Do you sell wine kits, w/juice?

Sadly, our 1/3 acre of Petite Sirah doesn't produce enough to do juice kits as yet. Maybe when we have all 6+ plantable acres developed we can consider it (2012 or later?). This year's yield was 1100lbs of fruit for ~2 barrels of wine. As we work with Pamo Valley Winery currently by selling our fruit to them for finishing. We expect that the 2008 PS will be released in '10.

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by blackchipjim

The total breakdown would take just a generation to put us back in the dark ages.

Larouche has been warning of a New Dark Ages for years,
and closer than a whole generation. -

---------
This presentation appears in the November 21, 2008 issue
of Executive Intelligence Review.

Only My Reforms Can Save
The Planet from a Dark Age

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.


Lyndon LaRouche made the following remarks to a private meeting in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 11, 2008. The transcript has been edited, and subheads added. [PDF version of the Strategy section]


As you know, probably, as of last July, I forecast that we were at the end of a phase of the system. And within three days, after my forecast, on July 25 of last year, the breakup of the present monetary system began, with what was called by some people who didn't know any better, a "subprime crisis." It was never a subprime crisis: The idea that a real estate bubble exploded and had a chain-reaction on the world is nonsense. That didn't happen: It happened the other way around.


The system which was to explode, or implode, just broke loose at its weakest point. But the problem lies, today, not in the real estate area or otherwise; it lies in financial derivatives. The financial derivatives system of the world is what is in the process of collapsing. And the financial derivatives system totals to over $1 quadrillion U.S. dollars in estimated value! And this is the great speculative bubble which has built up from 1987 on, under Alan Greenspan and others. This is the bubble that is now collapsing.


This is a hopeless collapse, in terms of the present system. No mere reform of this present system, will save the planet. The nearest event comparable to this, in all European civilization's experience, occurred in the 14th Century, with the general collapse, called a "New Dark Age," in which the entire system of Europe collapsed. The number of villages collapsed by one-half, the population of Europe collapsed by one-third, and it took several decades before even the beginning of civilization returned.


The crisis we have today, worldwide, is of a similar form: A great financial bubble, which has been growing at a great rate, while the rate of net physical production per capita, has been collapsing. This system is doomed in its present form. And there is no minor reform, there's no monetary reform that could save this system. We are headed for an absolute, total collapse of the planet, unless a change is made. There is no hope, for any remedy, within the framework of what's called a monetary system.


But rather, as I shall emphasize here, the alternative is the establishment of a credit system, to replace the present monetary system.

The Crucial Role of the United States

Now, the model for the credit system lies in the United States, historically. If you study the U.S. Constitution and the peculiarities of the U.S. Constitution, as opposed to those of Europe, our system of government has no resemblance in essentials, to any European system of government. European systems of government are essentially parliamentary systems, not federal systems. There are reforms in European states, which have moved in the direction of a Presidential system. The best example of an attempt in that direction was Charles de Gaulle, as President of France, in his Fifth Republic. There was a serious attempt to establish a nation-state system in Europe, by de Gaulle. But since that time, there has been no successful effort, to establish a true nation-state system, as opposed to a parliamentary system.


Therefore, the United States has a crucial significance in this, and without a crucial role by the United States, which seems extremely difficult right now, because of the present Presidency and so forth—without the United States, there is no hope for avoiding what will be a plunge into a new dark age, resembling that which occurred in Europe, which occurred in the 14th Century.


That's the situation we face. No simple reform, no adjustment, no monetary agreement, nothing of that sort will work.


There are, however, very specific measures, of agreements among governments which could change the system, could change it without anything too radical, but it would get us through.


Now, the first thing that has to happen is, in practice, is that unless there's an agreement of a certain type among the United States, Russia, China, and India, we have reached a condition, where it would be impossible to save the world from a collapse, a worldwide collapse. The form would be this: It would be the change of the present world monetary system, the elimination of the present world monetary system, to replace it by a credit system, which is consistent with the principles of the U.S. Federal Constitution. Remember that our Constitution, and our Presidential system, was not based on a parliamentary system; it was not based on a monetary system. It was based on what's called a credit system.


MORE- http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2008/...y_reforms.html

[aslan]

Originally Posted by blackchipjim

I was thinking more of the total breakdown of the systems. The facts point to without the basics of energy and system supports such as electricity, gas, sanitation, water treatment and the whole nine yards, most of us will be gone in a few months. The total breakdown would take just a generation to put us back in the dark ages. With the infrastructure gone money or diamonds and gold all that we value is worthless. You are correct about the wine and beer and such but food would take over as a barter such as third world countries do. I think you mean 12/26/12 is the day. blackchipjim

What happens on 12/26/12? I haven't heard of that one before.

http://www.december212012.com/