Quote from: Sjalq on June 28, 2011, 08:39:13 AM

Quote from: LightRider on June 27, 2011, 07:38:38 PM

As I said earlier, money was emergent as was societal structures that developed enforcement mechanisms also. Barter had been dominant due to the simple and local nature of trading and it did not require a third party to enforce arbitrary values. Money can only exist when the dominant culture enforces arbitrary and opinion based values on others. But as with many emergent behaviors and technologies, they give way to newer and better ones.

Well here I disagree because two societies could trade with gold because both realised it served as a good medium of exchange. No central enforcement was necessary. Both parties were willing to accept it, both recognized it as being in their best interest. This is important since they had an independent yard stick by which they could measure the worth of their production and the production of others. With sound money you can only enrich yourself if you produce what others need and are willing to trade for.

Such use would have been developed over time with tradition being the enforcement mechanism. Any sufficiently advanced society is held together by tradition, the propagation of the dominant culture. Once again, its value is based on opinion, as opposed to the obvious value of necessary resources, animals, food and manufacturing material. Certainly its value as a currency is obvious, but beyond that it would be subject to all the forces that affect currency. Group A might have a different opinion about the worth of gold since they live in an area with far more of it than group B. The enforcement mechanism in this case is force of violence if the groups do not come to an agreement.

Quote from: Sjalq on June 28, 2011, 08:39:13 AM

Quote from: LightRider on June 27, 2011, 07:38:38 PM

There are no "rights". You behave and act in accordance with the dominant culture and society that you have developed in. Your ability to cause positive or negative outcomes depend on what is tolerated, incentivised and punished by your environment. Your choice to be wasteful is predicated on what your environment allows for.

That is not what I asked. Do I have the right to misspend what I've produced?
Or rather, do you have the right to force me to spend or produce in a fashion you deem better than my own judgement, even if you are correct?

There are no rights. My reaction to your perceived wasteful behavior depends entirely on my previous experiences in the environment that sustained me. If I have had a limited education and lacked the skills or abilities necessary to engage you with different and possibly better ideas about resource management, then I might use force as my only option. If you lack the education or critical thinking skills to understand that my ideas are better, or have an aberrant value set that doesn't allow you to understand the consequences, and I am unwilling or unable to use force to alter your behavior, then we both suffer for your wasteful actions, assuming that they do in fact lead to negative outcomes. I know that is not a simple answer, but it is necessary to point out the inadequacy of your question.