Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:
Personally, I believe that the concept of money, or currency, was developed to provide a more fair alternative to bartering for goods or services, which in turn was, alongside the concept of trading as a whole, was developed to allow people to acquire much needed goods and services without having to resort to the use of force, as is typically the case when animals interact.
Money started out as a "technology" to resolve some common issues with barter. Specifically, people would often want goods but the people with those goods would not want to exchange them for the goods being offered - this led to complex trading where you would need to do several transactions with other people just to get the goods that could be exchanged for what you really wanted.
The fact that barter existed at all indicates that people were aware of the issues associated with using violence to get what they wanted - you could kill the person and steal what they have quite easily, but then you remove that source of goods. Repeat that process a few times and the resource is no longer on the market, so it makes sense to find a more peaceful way of getting it. Sadly, in recent years, this lesson has been overlooked - particularly with respect to oil.
In respect to money / currency / tender / etc - it doesn't really matter what you call it - the outcome will always be the same. A group of people will work tirelessly to subvert it to their needs. This has been happening since money first started replacing barter, and is not generally caused by greed. Instead it's the realm of the sociopath, always looking to enslave those around him (and in rare cases, her). Money manipulation is mentioned in most religious scripts, IIRC the only time Jesus suggests violence is towards money makers, and I believe there is similar intent in other religions. To think that using any form of money / credit / whatever would somehow not result in the same outcome that it has throughout history would be a form of insanity.
Capitalism is just the most recent doctrine to "try the same thing again and hope for different results". One of the driving ideas behind capitalism is the notion that a system can be put in place that makes greed beneficial to mankind. First, this completely overlooks the fact that it's sociopaths, not greed, that causes the problems, and secondly it ignores thousands of years of history that show the same results wherever money is used.
Many will say that "Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternative" (or a very similar phrase - obviously a programmed perspective rather than individual assertion). I tend to disagree with such a statement: Barter systems, despite a few specific issues like the one mentioned earlier, result in a much better form of society.
It depends on how you measure success.
If success is measured by things like GDP, profit, kills and consumption, the score card of a sociopath, then capitalism fits the bill. Debt based money supply is arguably the greatest achievement of the sociopaths. But only a small minority of Earth's population are sociopaths so such a system, despite what we have been programmed to believe, is not in our best interests.
If success, however, is measured in happiness, safety, peace, environmentalism, etc., barter is much closer to the desired form of society. Such metrics are the score card of the vast majority of people on the planet. Since the initiation of the economic collapse back in 2007/8, many countries have been plunged in to extreme poverty. In countries such as Spain, Greece, India, etc., many sections of society returned to barter (particularly in rural communities) while others created their own local currencies. In all such cases, the poverty dissipated - simply by replacing the sociopath score card with a human score card in terms of how success is measured. Things like the internet and cell phones have a radical impact on the effectiveness of barter and local currencies, a fact which should not be overlooked.
When human and environmental needs form the basis of success metrics, very different approaches are possible. Here's some examples from the UK:
* Bristol Pound (local currency):
http://bristolpound.org/
* Bank of Dave (a sociopath-free bank):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnley_Savings_and_Loans
* Incredible Edible (free food, grown in public places):
http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/
The notion that something akin to capitalism is necessary, or even that money is necessary, is programmed in to us from birth. The truth, however, is that it's more akin to mass hypnosis of people who choose not to think for themselves. For an idea of what a moneyless society would look like, specifically a Resource Based Economy (RBE), I encourage you to investigate (quite extensively) the Venus Project:
http://www.thevenusproject.com/ -- this project not only describes how an RBE would operate, but more importantly it describes how to transition from where we are now to an RBE.
A key ideology behind an RBE is the prevention of sociopath tendencies. By removing the perceived scarcity of resources, you remove the incentive to adopt the mindset of a sociopath.
Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:
2. to search for and hopefully establish peaceful contact with any surviving civilizations.
Other than scavengers, most other people that would be encountered would be predominantly military in nature. Most militaries have large underground, underwater or mountain bases. A good recent example is "
Site 911" in Israel. Chances of "peaceful" encounters with such forces would tend towards 0%.
Shadow Wolf TJC wrote:
4. to collect stem cells from any surviving humans and wildlife so as to improve the odds of humanity's survival as a whole.
There are many designated sites around the world already in place today for such eventualities:
*
http://www.deepstorageproject.com/ -- human & animal DNA
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault -- heirloom seeds