Do We Need Money

A discussion between Alessio Bini and Michel Bauwens.

Alessio Bini

"There is a large cultural trend that claims: “Money is bad”, “money is not necessary” and so on. Zeigeist, New Age and others claim this.

To go to the end of the question, let's start form the beginning.

Economic searchers say us that money was born to permit exchanging merchandises and services in different time and between different people. Before money there was only barter and the economy was very poor. Money permit this and its easy to conserve and to transport.

Howevere the Zeitgeist thesis is this: the Earth permits us to living with profusion of resources. The poverty in the world is created overblowly. So, if we can live with profusion of resources, we don't need of money, because we can have food, beverages, address, car, computers, and every other merchandises we need and we can imagine. For me, this is a big anthropological error or better a big metaphysical error. Before Saint Augustin, there was valid aristotelian thesis that claims: human is a rational agent. And for this position, the Zeitgeist argument is a logical consequence.

But with Saint Augustin, we discover that human is everything: evil and angel. Following augustinian thesis, if we returned in condition of profusion of resources, the avidity will awake in someone and he usurp every resouce.

The proof, for me, in insight Zeigeist argument. If we are arrived in condition of poverty, created overblowly from someone, it's means that in the stard we leave in profusion of resource and someone had created this state of poverty.

Do you think money is necessary, Michel?"