# money: it's bad to rely too much on money.

money can be practical tool or a cause of big stress in life. it depends how much you have. have less than what you need then you are causing problems to yourself, having more than you need then you are making your future self happier. it would be nicer if the stressing part could go away. does humanity even need money? as a kid, i did not really need it. my family provided for everything. even neighbors, relatives often brought gifts or cooked food without expecting anything in return. i only needed money when i was interacting with strangers. those strangers did not know me, did not trust me so they needed an alternative way of giving their goods without feeling bad about themselves. so i used money there. i guess i could say money is an alternative to trust. it is not as powerful but still, a simple, one dimensional tool. however i much preferred the world where things were not reduced to this one dimension. in fact if i am doing a small favor to someone, i refuse to accept money. that would just convert this rich sense of trust i acquired into numbers. i would rather keep the trust than the money. often it is unclear how much money should actions convert into. even if you assign a value, it changes over time. in the meantime trust remains constant.

i often wonder if such moneyless living is still possible in adulthood. i could imagine a community of people who live together and agree to share the costs of living in exchange to not deal with the costs individually. for instance this group of people might live in a large, multi bedroom shared house with a single, shared bank account. each person makes a periodic fixed contribution to the bank account. then the "finance person" pays the bills and rents from that said bank account. the kitchen is also shared and somebody always fills it up from the shared bank account. somebody might cook something nice for everybody every day. maybe group would share bus passes, swimming pool passes or access rights to other luxuries. the point is that the everyday life does not depend money. the community members do not need to take their your purse or credit card for rents, bills or food. that would be quite nice way of living. i am prone to obsess about spending. i see almost all spending of mine as some sort of inefficiency and then i start researching and thinking how can i optimize my behavior so that my spending goes nearer to zero. however if i do not see the bills, i do fine, blissfully ignorant. the missus already learned that she is better off if she hides the bills away from me.

such shared living does not scale infinitely though. to maintain harmony all members have to be in sync with each other. they have to have shared values, house rules and matching personality. maybe it scales up to a dozen of people tops although i think 4 adults is about the ideal number. finding the right people is really important. i lived in a few environments and i learned that if i leave my roommates or living mates up to chance, i will not like it. however if i pick people i like, it actually enhances my quality of life compared to living alone or just with a partner. i am really conscious how my words affect other people so i usually withdraw from conversations just to be safe. i just listen to others talk. however if i know every person well enough in my immediate vicinity, i feel more free to talk. so living among friends gives more opportunity for idle chit chat and other activities which can often be quite entertaining and fun that i otherwise would not enjoy among strangers or other acquaintances. the problem is i have not found a good way to easily find the right people. but that and shared living is a different can of worms.

in such arrangements i do not need to think about buying my own food anymore. if kitchen is always stocked, i can grab some food from there anytime. no more obsessing about bills. i outsourced my worries to "my tribe". even if i am thinking about an expensive purchase of a luxury, like buying a used fixie bike because i suddenly want to go on a bike tour, i can ask the help of my tribe. they can verify if this is a sane reason for spending the money, and if so they can help me with the purchase. they can help negotiate prices, do the financial transactions and so on. i do not even have to personally think about money. i trade with trust within my tribe members and on a higher level the tribes trade with money between each other.

maybe a very limited form of the above thoughts could scale up to a larger community as well. imagine a small but densely occupied town. this town could have provide cheap free food for whoever that wants it (within limits, e.g. you have eat everything right at serving). if it serves cheap porridge or just stale bread every day, that is fine too. maybe it could even have a nearby facility with clean water and warm rooms. maybe even allow sleeping there. think of nothing fancy, just mattresses on the floor, rooms perhaps shared with others. the barest minimum to satisfy the lowest level in the maslow's hierarchy of needs. i think keeping up such a facility would not cost a lot of money. most of the cost would be the salaries of people running the facility. and probably nobody would want to use such facilities willingly (i guess i would be an exception). however having such facility available would mean that no matter what you have or not have, simple living is available for everyone for free. i think having free, no questions asked access to the facilities for the basic needs should be the marker of advanced society. money, trading and access to luxuries can come after that. i feel just simply giving a lot of money to people (basic income) is less effective way to a prosperous civilization. i am not against it, it is just i think we should not base our pillars of society on money but rather on infrastructure. once the latter is in place, money can flow freely. let me demonstrate on a few examples why i think infrastructure would be a better solution over the long term:

• societal integration between the haves and havenots: with free money i think this would just decline. from what i can see, rent in cities keeps growing. if the poor people do not have access to subsidized housing, they will be forced out of the city. thus cities will only house the rich and elites of humanity. i think our society should be inclusive and come up with ways that diverse set of people can live together, regardless of their income. the people who want isolation are the ones who should move out of the cities.
• motivation: if i have to sleep on an uncomfortable mattress and eat the same crappy porridge every day, i would be probably intrinsically motivated to do something about it. even the slightest extra income can grant me access to a luxury. maybe i can get someone give or pay me a decent lunch if i cut their grass. maybe then i will be motivated to go back for that extra income. with free money, i can decide to save money by keeping my room's temperature lower and then afford a decent lunch every day but otherwise i can still just stay at home and do nothing useful, e.g. writing articles like these. the point is that the difference between no job and some job is much larger and thus more motivating.
• homelessness: in the free money situation people can still stay homeless if they for some reason do not have access to money. i might be visiting a different city and i might lose my wallet and phone. now i cannot get accomodation. in the free infrastructure scenario it is no big deal. i can actually decide to go without the wallet because i can get food and a bed for free anyways.
• stability: the current monetary system does not look super stable to me. people will always argue how much money should i get. and even if i get some money, the next day it might become worthless because some rogue algorithm messed up the whole financial system. infrastructure sounds a more stable proposition. just because new york exploded, does not mean that the porridge reserves in my town evaporate into air. i can still rely on receiving food the next day.
• system understanding: in my opinion it is important for the members of a community to understand how their community works so that they easily help out. understanding infrastructure is much easier than understanding the financial system. the goal of the infrastructure is to satisfy the needs of its users. the problems that can arise are usually technical in nature. if there is no water then somebody can go and repair the pipes or get water via alternative means. if the rent is too high in a city, people cannot just go and make it lower.

and the ideal way to design such "living infrastructure" is to have the designers actually live in the infrastructure they designed. they would have an intrinsic motivation to ensure it works well. i am sure they could come up with a long list of reasons why it would not suit them but so would anyone else. this is why this requirement is needed: to design something that actually works.

note that i do not advocate against money or even against giving people free money. i think that is all fine. what i argue for is that one should not require money just to co-exist happily on this planet. it is useful for trading, building new things. but humanity should have a minimum standard of living that is not based on the fictional money but rather on the actual needs of the planet's inhabitants. once most people have access to that, money can be seen as a tool for the extra benefits society provides. until that happens, i will see money as something to stress about.

published on 2017-12-11, last modified on 2018-01-17

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