## Metadata - Author: [[Matthew Holten]] - Full Title: Moneyless Society - Category: #books ## Highlights - One of the most fundamental problems with capitalism is its tendency to reduce everything to a single interpretation of value: price. This is a problem because an item’s price gives us little to no information about many other relevant factors, such as working conditions, pollutive effects, or any other detrimental effect. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=490)) - One thing we could say is that the price system largely ignores an item’s ecological value. How many trees did it take to make that stack of paper? What effects will chopping down those trees have? What long-term consequences will those actions and processes have on our environment, our water quality, or our children’s future? Ecological value is difficult to quantify in numbers and profits. Something’s ecological value includes its relationships and purposes within its greater environment. An arbitrary price cannot capture that complexity. And that is why we need a different, more complex way of thinking, ([Location 505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=505)) - Most externalities fall into one of two categories: inequality or resource overshoot. ([Location 556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=556)) - In essence, if our planet were a household, our cupboards would be nearly empty and our trash cans would be overflowing. Not only are we running out of resources to harvest (and destroying entire ecosystems in the process), but we are running out of places to put our trash. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=573)) - At this point, the only things we can be 100 percent certain of are that the way of life that most of us are used to is nowhere near sustainable, that because of our negligence our planet and environment will never be the same, and that the more biodiversity we lose, the more unpredictable and difficult our survival as a species will become. ([Location 1756](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=1756)) - All life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be—this is the inter-related structure of reality. Martin Luther King Jr. ([Location 1803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=1803)) - What we have in our current economic system is trade-based reciprocity, or transactional reciprocity. That means that practically everything we need and use must be procured through trade or transactions. And because everything must be traded, we also need currency, which means we also need jobs and cars and all the other things that come with the transaction-based lives we have created for ourselves. ([Location 2215](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=2215)) - The diagram of a moneyless society illustrates systemic reciprocity. That means that instead of people conducting transactions to deliver things from one individual or company to the next, we utilize systems and structures that provide an abundance of necessities, while eliminating as much human labor as possible. Because there is no need to pay bills to survive, and because people don’t need to work forty hours a week to pay for their necessities, they would have greater amounts of free time that could be spent on activities they want to do. ([Location 2219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0BLGCWN5D&location=2219))