RE: The inherent contradiction of RBE style philosophies
You do a lot of arguing with yourself, but even that is quite interesting. :-D I have no idea about the 'Luddite' attitudes you are talking about. Pleas elaborate on that.
Yes we do need a unit to measure the effectiveness of stuff, but it is definitely not money. At least not the money as it exists now. As of right now the closest we have to what works are the crypto currencies, because they are based on computational power. What I saw at bitshares is actually very good, as the transactions pay small fee that goes towards the maintenance/improvement of the system.
drop in price leads to more consumption
That is exactly the problem! Instead of decrease in the ammount of work, the current model is based about artificially increasing the consumption. There is that huge industry that exists to promote that. That is my beef with the system as is. I understand value in advertising to reach more audience and inform them about a product. But advertising to create the demand that does not exist? That is weird and parasitic, that is the ammount of effort put into it could be used much more constructively.
But back to the subject of money. One good system that I know of is "Islamic banking", fascinating stuff really.
While this is controversional, another interesting system was "freigeld". As far as abolishing money altogeter, that is something I am not sure about. Anyhow, have to get some sleep now.
'the money we have now' ie fiat currency, is manipulated in supply deliberately and openly to 'stimulate the economy' until eventually it gets all burnt out and then we have a crash, the big guys buy up the fire sale and the cycle repeats. It's a circle jerk. All you have to do is base the economy on money that is not centrally controlled. Then people can see clearly what the interest rate is really, and it regulates saving vs spending. High uncertainty = saving, low uncertainty = spending. The central banks manipulate it so it seems like the latter is always in play, until the last moment the pumping stops working and everyone scrambles for the exits.
Money is the only possible unit of measure in a market. But when its supply rate is controlled by certain groups, they can manipulate the rate to profit at everyone else's expense. Money controlled by one group for their own interests is not a money, but a debt instrument, one which they got governments to force you to use by various means. The beginning of fascism comes from banks controlling governments. This is how they pay for all the violence and this is why we can't have nice things.
It is nothing to do with the simple idea of a medium of exchange. This arises naturally out of barter. And it helps people regulate the economic activity by showing what is wanted and what is not.