A world without money

Like the world of Star Trek, of course. Whenever the Enterprise crew encountered money, it was on some backwoods planet with primitive tribes fighting over something inconsequential.

see Ireland circa 2009 - 2020

It would never work without Star Trek type replicators.
People are greedy by nature. Hippie ideals are moot.

Invent the replicator and you will have world peace within 10 years.
Until that happens, we're still going to keep killing each other.

Money is a much easier and standardised way to go about Bargaining. That you can conduct labor for one employer to receive money to spend at shops, is great. Otherwise every time you wanted to go out to a restaurant you'd have to mop their floors or clean their dishes. And if you want a steak you have to answer the phones for 17 minutes as well. If you sell shoes you make money that you can go to another store with to buy pants. It's essentially the same idea behind that whacky marxist/communism idea thing, but you know, more intelligent.

Pace2008 wrote: »

We would initially provide each other with goods and/or services in return for other goods and/or sevices, but eventually human ingenuity would come to the fore and we would devise some form of system where there would be a common, agreed...something...that could be exchanged for any and all goods and/or services.

What, like money?

There are several experiments in this direction right now. E.g. Lets schemes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_Systems

They generally require a high concentration of hippies in a large metropolitian area - Vancouver, Toronto, bits of Australia, the US and London (well Hackney).

Generally they are still working on the principle of the free market but with one crucial difference:

• Disclosure — information about balances is available to all members

I think this is the single most interesting aspect of them. You can criticise the rest of the ideas associated with LETS schemes for being hippy pie in the sky nonsense but that disclosure bit means that they have a more fully open market than anyone else allowing everyone to see the true cost of everything. Something that is currently missing/distorted in most/all markets we have. Hence the ability of more observant people to make money on traditional markets spotting inconsistencies in pricing.

If money didn't exist then somebody would invent it. The first thing people would do with a replicator is replicate money. It's human nature. Plus, people would still have to work, and even with free clothes, food, Internets, people still place a monetary value on their time. Would people really give up their spare time willingly, to work "for the benefit of mankind" instead of for something tangible? I couldn't honestly say that I would.

Terry wrote: »

Invent the replicator and you will have world peace within 10 years.

No, as soon as you do that people start replicating money, thus undermining every currency. The first thing that will happen is governments will rush to control the availability oh the technology. Eventually it will get out and either there will be more wars as governments rush to find something new that can grant them dominance over their neighbours, or there will be a cold war as every country will effectively have an infinite supply of weaponry.

I hope someone already posted this and I just missed it.