I find your description of capitalist economics to be grossly simplified,

because it is. We are not actually writing economic policy here you know. We are simply contrasting the premise of a basic income with the existing models of economics, and trying to avoid idealized concepts that have never been achieved because of real world complications that happen off the paper plan. To do that we must come to some basic understandings: What is money, what function does it serve for a person, and what function does it serve a society as a whole.

The establishment of those premises is not an economic policy it is a means of making sure all parties are having the same conversation without using the same words for different meanings. Money is a means of exchange, the person can use money as a means of acquiring goods or services in the exchange for a like value of goods and services and the unit of exchange allows for saving without spoilage or forced third party transaction to gain things you don't want in order to trade what you have a to another who wants what you have but hasn't got what you want so that you can exchange what you don't want to somebody who does want it and has what you want.

As a society the means of exchange allows for the free flow and exchange of resources from supply to demand and to allow for saving up toward future need be gaining more now. This is adventageous especially in the ability of young and able bodies laboring now to gain surplusses toward times when their abilities to labor are insufficient to meet needs.

That is money. The foundations upon which economics are built. and if that was all there was to it there wouldn't be nearly as much strife in the world.

Instead we have leveraging other peoples labor to gain profits for yourself and restricted access to Capital. Whereby individual have the ability to gain more 'goods and services' than their own ability to generate labor to earn it. The Likes of Warren Buffet could never have performed enough joules of labor to justify the assets he has gained during his life and the amount he has is in excess of anything he could reasonably need to meet his needs for living the rest of his life without knowing want or preventable suffering.

I'm pretty sure that if bill gates spent on nothing more then property tax, upkeep of the land and house, food, water, clothing and medical needs for his entire family that he could not in seven lifetimes spend a fraction of his 'goods and services'.

So it's clear that money is not being sought or primarily used as a means of those needs being met alone. so despite you assumption of

and I believe your suggesting a return to a barter system, which is terribly inefficient compared to a system based upon credits in the form of currency.

I do not advocate trade economies as a primary economic model, though I do support local trade groups in voluntary systems.

See one of the problems it economies got too big to handle local level economic activity while maintaining a one size fits all system to all aspects. It's why I advocate diversification of economic approaches. Local scrips to meet free moving currency to allow for exchanges in local communities even when demand or supply from outside or the nation as a whole passes a community by. So instead of having to inject national currency into local markets to prop them up and allow development and minimum community maintainance the communities could stand on their own with internal supports for local exchanges of goods and services. It make for a more resilient system and prevents more prosperous local economies experiencing booms from diverting economic energy from lesser communities and strangling them off.

Are you familiar with the tragedy of the commons? http://en.wikipedia...._of_the_commons

I'm not only aware of it I've worked in depth on the topic on a university level exploration of the topic and it's role in a sustainable development and management of the economies and the environment.

putting aside the evidence that it doesn't have the examples to back it up and several to disprove it : http://climateandcap...of-the-commons/

http://www.edf.org/o...mising-solution

but it wholey forgets the implication that if a resources is commons and one maximizes personal gain and shares the burden that the same can be applied to resources held as personal property. I can ride into a town and buy up all of a resource in the community and sell it all for the profits to myself and hold no stake in the communities collapse when I can just ride on into the next town.

The tragedy isn't due to a commons, it's due to the persute of unrestricted personal gain while avoiding the consequences of it, in the quest for infinite growth. In fact a system whereby I have the monetary resources to pay to tap a resource dry and profit from doing so, allows me to use the profits from draining a resource to buy out other holders of competition in the providing of that resource and thus gain a greater ability to strip mine all of a resource from an area who will never see the return of the lost resource or the potential funds to the community it could have represented.

I argue that such a system is perpetuated by the involvement of the Federal Reserve in the U.S. economy, which I'm assuming you're referring to. See above for more details. Here's a link: http://betterlivingt...s-cycle-theory/

no. actually I'm referring to a very simple fact that money, even gold does not itself feed the hungry. Only when they are used in a representative system of exchange do they then become something that allow the hungry to resolve their hunger through extended systems of change. And those are dependant on agreed upon values and willingness to take them as means of trade. I could convince you that all those leaves on your lawn are a horrible clutter and waste problem and charge you for removing them from your property where once they are mine I can then shred them and sell them as mulching for gardeners. That is simply because you saw no value in something and in fact saw negative value in it, where I saw actual value in it. The discrepency in perception of value in this case is a bit more benign but in the case of say gold standard or dollars it's a means of funneling economic worth in one direction. And in a system where that same economic worth dictates control levels over laws that pertain to economic policy...

Every monetary system whereby the value of the standard can vary according to location or time is subject to essentially the reverse of 'trickle down economics'. Usually when that hits a certain point it restricts the resource pool access to the majority to a degree where there is not enough to allow for adequate exchange of goods and services to maintain the populations ability to function.

That's when you get cultural 'hard resets'.

In the case of most of the discussions on this forum the scenario is painted as such: Company A is making record profits, it uses those to buy a lobbyist to tweak a law by adding a rider in an unrelated law that allows conditions for company A to buy out it's primary competitor company B. With the combined assets company Ab can now rest relatively secure in monopoly where they shift focus over to automating as much of their processes as possible to change the equation of income and costs to maximize holdings for the ceo and shareholders. With increased automation is cut labor, cut labor means more people with lost income.

So far that is little more than a brutal truth of capitalism in it's current form. But where it becomes pertinant here on this forum is the level of automation is increasing faster than those with eyes on past and present see. and worse it's more wide spread. The consequence isn't a shift in labor pools, it's the drying up of labor pools.

For the laborers the loss of those options means no income. No income means they cannot afford homes and food to survive... and they cannot afford the companies products.

A basic income allows that people could see to the homes and food they need to sustain themselves and beyond that a person who can't find work, but is secure in what they need to survive may opt to do nothing, but more often than not you will find people starting their own businesses, or selling hobby crafts for a little money on the side, or gardenings and trading organic vegetables from their gardens. The income from these is surplus to their survival needs and thus can be invested or exchanged for the companies goods and services.