Zefram wrote: > I think they're reinvented just because they're familiar to the players. > I point again to the word "invented": natural things are discovered, > not invented.
This is just semantics. Persons "discover" in a communal society that it is natural to have some medium of exchange for items of shared value and so "invent" one. Maybe we're mixing little-c and big-c capitalism. I think that markers of value, and means of exchanging them are "natural." But those can exist in a gift economy, as well. As can loans and some other fiscal instruments. I think I'm with you that big-C capitalism (5% growth/quarter, taxes, etc.) doesn't work without scarce-but renewable resources, which we don't have (that's why we made land and weather towards the end of the old system, but you're right, it was unnatural). Risk reduction (e.g. insurance) doesn't work because the risk is unnatural, as well. Our resources are pretty much zero-sum (my increased voting power comes at the expense of yours). Big-C capitalism turns nasty in those situations. Maybe our Nomic is more in line with a "natural" society at the limits of its sustainability than the real world is. -Goethe
