So... You at least see how currency is a fundamental necessity and a barter system wouldn't even come close to being feasible, right?
As for your tangent, yeah. If you lend money to a friend, you kind of want them to pay you back at some point. Naturally, if some bank lends a government a few billion dollars, they're going to want it repaid. I fail to see how that's unreasonable. As for quality, well, that's a rather vague claim to make. With pretty much any good or service, you get something cheap and crappy or you can splash out a bit more for something better. Though I get the feeling you're more talking about the current state of things, where people are more interested in things being cheap. To that I say, we're only just coming out of the worst recession since the great depression. Unemployment is through the roof and for those who are employed, job security is a tad lacking. As such, no one really wants to spend any more than they have to. Give it a few more years and things'll start looking up.
I am not saying debts should not be repaid, but when a system is created around the idea of debt — "you owe me", that system can quickly become toxic as eventually everyone will be so severe in debt that progress grinds to a halt because everyone's looking for resources to repay debt or cut back to make those repayments.
A system surrounding goods and services being paid on the spot is fine by me, but I think credit and debt have become so much a center of the economy that it is truly toxic. Consider: say you want to purchase a house, and have the money to pay for it in full — the current economy has created an environment where it is now bank's jobs to discourage you from paying in full and rather seek you to get a mortgage with interest.
It is this debt-based society that has modified the economy to where it is now a deformed twisted form of what it used to be. It has made the economy so complex that even analysts are skiddish and stressed out all the time. If the economy was truly as good as it is claimed to be stock markets wouldn't be roller coasters, they would be fairly even and high frequency trading wouldn't be needed because people could have faith in their investments.
As I said, recession. That's why unemployment is high. I would certainly agree that the US government did a really shitty job of handling it, but that's a failing of the government, not he economy in general.
Recession and unemployment are symptoms while the patient is still in critical care, but everyone keeps applying bandages to a wound without bothering to remove the shards because the the patient has become so complex nobody can understand how to remove them.
Businesses exist to provide a good or service, not make the employees happy. Providing the good/service in question to the customers as efficiently as possible trumps whatever personal whims the CEO happens to have. I'm not saying they should mistreat their workers for the sake of profits, that's not just morally bad but also tends to cause political instability. Just that unnecessary costs do translate to a more expensive price for the customer.
The difficulty is that many businesses have even disposed of customer satisfaction in the same like for the sake of the board/investors. This often results in the organization's mission statements getting thrown out the window and trampled upon.
The unfortunate fact is is that the economy has created an environment where the investors are the true customers of a company and that the product purchasers are just walking wallets and that the company's true product is itself. Consider how many companies almost seem like they're operating as sleazy, low-class prostitutes and whore themselves out to any investor with any motive that comes by, even if that motive goes against the company mission (it makes more economical business sense seemingly to scrap a mission statement that's in the way of profit than to miss a potential investor with ill intent).
True, lobbying is also a major problem that needs to be rather severely neutered. Ultimately, businesses should answer to the government, not the other way around.
The difficulty there is that as long as money matters to politicians and agency management and that the social cancer of "you must be rich otherwise you're a failure" exists, it will continue to be an issue.
That's not really a thing that can actually happen. No country can just say to another "your currency is worthless, we cant more money". Exchange rates based, like pretty much everything else, on supply and demand, the lion's share of which is relative trade and investments between the two. It's highly decentralised and is not subject to the whims of any individual.
It's not at the whims of any individual, but there are systematic methods to get another country over a barrel. Consider the Chinese/US relationship: China has the US over a barrel economically and could easily pull the carpet out from under the US and crash the US's markets if the US defaults, so the US ends up "printing money" to pay for its debts which in turn devalues the US's money. There's no check and balance for that.
You did say in your opening post that you think currency itself is the root cause of these problems and if we went back to a barter economy we'd be free to progress. You made it very clear that you believe it to be the solution, and as such, that's the main point I'm trying to refute here. It's how a discussion works, at least without constantly shifting the goal posts. I'm not saying you're set in your ways or anything. If I honestly thought you were, I'd still be openly mocking you like I kind of was in my first post.
"Currency" being the root cause, no. Currency is just a piece of paper or chunk of metal just with social and traditional definition behind it — it has no intrinsic value, just utility value. What I am predominantly saying is that currency opens the economy up for corruption, e.g. debt-based society, profit-driven business (rather than customer relations-driven business) and thus constant instability where everyone has to live every day of their lives fearing that they will be kicked out of their home and job.
The problem I see, Krad, is that it sounds like you're anthropomorphizing the economy; giving it a mind and will of its own. It doesn't have either, the economy, just like condoms, guns, and bookbags, is a tool. That's what humans do: we make tools to solve our problems. Don't blame the tool because a few humans are complete, incomprehensible dickheads. Destroying the modern economy would be cutting off your nose to spite your face; it'd kill billions of people through starvation alone, that's not taking into consideration the likely increase in the rates of disease, decrease in the rates and effectiveness of healthcare, and a slew of other things that would likely force us to dig a mass grave the size of Texas just to handle all the corpses we'll have on our hands.
The Federation was an ideal, a fictional ideal. It'd be wonderful if we didn't need money, but until someone comes up with a solution that doesn't send us back to the damned Stone Age, its the best we got.
To put it another way: the Pre-Industrial Age wasn't the Garden of Eden, it fucking sucked.
The economy isn't a single personified body, it doesn't have a will, but it does act quite organic like a cancer or virus.
Just like a virus, the current economy needs hosts to keep it going, it needs cells (people) to replicate and transcend generations but as the viral load upon the body (the world and/or society) escalates the body is damaged more and more.
But too, perhaps it has cancerous properties to it as well, in that it was once a legitimate element of the body, but through overgrowth and damage it became out of control, compromising the body's integrity and infecting whatever it comes in contact with but since it is part of the body there is no way for the body's own immune system to recognize the "bad" to correct it.
You are quite correct in saying that the economy has no consciousness nor any anthropomorphic properties, but in lacking those properties it has no consciousness to be aware if that damage, no ability to in itself say "This isn't right", despite everyone having such implicit unconditional trust in it's ability to "correct itself" then proceed to scurry around like the sky's falling every time it twitches the wrong way.
