WHAT IF: humanity harnesses free energy (wind, solar, etc) to produce all of our energy, and rely on machines to produce all of our needs (food, clothing, transportation, etc), will capitalism still exist? Since most people will have nothing to produce will money/currency still have a use?
Remember, this is a WHAT IF, so if you don’t believe such a "perfect" society can exist, feel free to explain.
Harnessing "free" energy requires machines that cost money, because they are built by machine and people that cost money. That’s a difficult circle to break. Besides humans are never satisfied with anything, they always want to be better than the other guy. Even if we had machines that produce everything, there will always be demand for "premium" machines that make better food and clothes than the other guy’s machine. If there’s demand prices will rise, and there you go, money will always be necessary.
How do you propose to produce the "machines" if not with capital?
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Harnessing "free" energy requires machines that cost money, because they are built by machine and people that cost money. That’s a difficult circle to break. Besides humans are never satisfied with anything, they always want to be better than the other guy. Even if we had machines that produce everything, there will always be demand for "premium" machines that make better food and clothes than the other guy’s machine. If there’s demand prices will rise, and there you go, money will always be necessary.
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using your logic, oil is also free energy.
I mean it costs to get it out of the ground and to consumer, but oil itself is free. In the same way, while wind is free, it costs a lot of money to make the turbine, build it in the field, lay down cables, maintaining and repair it, and then replace it with a new one once it wears out.
Machines will still need human maintenance, like care that need oil changes and new filters and stuff.
Even if we design machines that fix themselves and produce stuff for us for free, there is still limited amount of resources on this planet, so we can produce limited amount of stuff. And human needs are infinite (you always wanna stand out of the crowd), and there are individual tastes and needs, there will have to be some kind of distribution mechanism.
And until we can build a computer that will guess your wishes, and until we can get you to accept what the computer gives you, the distribution mechanism will have to be money or some form of them.
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