Would society work if money was banned?

Question

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this!
Any suggestions how it could work would be helpful too.

Yeh, I know about bartering... I'm just wondering if we could formulate a new concept, learning lessons from the old way... & advancing...

Answer 1

Of course it would. And it would work much better than it does now after we figured out a new way to evenly exchange. Right now, less than five percent of humanity controls over 90% of the wealth, a most unacceptable imbalance in many ways.

Answer 2

No, there's no way it could ever work. Money (in some shape or form) has existed from the beginning. It provides structure and order in society, creates an important cycle, and without it people would feel lost and would probably get up to mischief. It wouldn't be possible to ban it anyway as people would just create their own currency, leading to further problems, or people would simply begin to barter as they did in the past, as most people have mentioned. This is a difficult, if not impossible one. Currency is a natural part of life and always has been. It brings order and is meant to exist. xx

Answer 3

The only way I could think of would be if drastic regulation was introduced. Such as requiring people work or they go to jail. Otherwise, people wouldn't work.

The only problem would then be getting people to work the "difficult" jobs. Would people still become lawyers, scientists, doctors, CEOs, etc... if they weren't guaranteed a luxurious salary? Some would, but many probably wouldn't. More people would probably settle as a video store clerk.

Also, people would have regulation on what they can "take." Otherwise people would go out and "take" huge mansions, sports cars, acres of land, etc...

Answer 4

Let's look at the historical data. Long before there was paper money, there was bartering. Trading goods and services simply became standardized to precious metals, specifically Gold and Silver. When it was found to be dangerous to carry large sums of money over vast differences, the first unified banking/checking system was developed. (The Knights Templar had the first unified system. You could deposit money in one city, they cut you a document with proving how much you had deposited that could be redeemed at any other city). Slowly this system of banking piggy-backed the standardization of currency (where every state in the U.S. used the same money, and then every country developed a Gold standard for comparing their monies).

This is significant to your question (even though it doesn't seem like it). We first need to establish the idea of money being totally eliminated. Let's say some terrorists destroyed all electronic data that stored credit and financial information. Then let's say that a nuclear bomb at every major gold depository destroyed the Gold (so that we don't have a fall-back) and we'll pretend this happened globally so that we can't pick up someone else's currency.

Now that we've found a way to make it into your scenario where paper money is useless, there is no gold to fall back on, and we have no financial institutions to carry credit or banking history. Most likely we would fall into a new form of barter. Just like mankind has done in the past, goods and services would be traded directly. But with our current technology, banks would evolve into information directories and warehouses that would simply track and hold what type of debt was owed to which person. We would have a check-writing system that instead of transferring funds, would transfer a certain amount of goods, that possibly could even be broken up.

Let me describe a scenario. You owe me a cow because I gave you a car. I owe one friend something because he fixed my roof and a doctor something for helping me get better. You take the cow to the bank and they write up a slip indicating I'm the owner. Let's say that the car is worth a week's hard labor or two weeks soft labor (like practicing medicine). You gave me something of equal value. Because it took three days to fix my roof, I write a slip to the roofer for 3/7 of my cow. It took the doctor two days to help me get better, so I write a slip to the doctor for 2/14 (or 1/7) of my cow. Now, I write a slip to the butcher for 1/14 of my cow because it will take half a day to butcher the cow for my debts. These guys now can trade their ownership slips with anyone else's goods or services or they can go to the butcher shop and cash in. The doctor didn't need my meat so he goes to the carpenter, gives him a slip for half of his meat in exchange for a chair. The carpenter looks at the slip, sees that it says on it that the doctor has XXX pounds of meat, checks with the butcher to see that it's there, and then the doctor and carpenter write up new slips, saying that they are owners of half the original amount of meat--as verified by butcher.

The butcher holds the remainder of my cow in his freezer and writes me a slip indicating I'm the owner of 5/14 of one cow (which could be XX pounds of meat). I have food and barter :)
Granted, this system would not be sufficient to all of our needs because needs such as electricity, water, computer & telephone service with large corporations would want a standardized trade..... a corporation wouldn't like getting paid in meat, lawn services and beer, so most likely a new trade standard would develop within a year--we're at a point in our civilization that simply 'banning' money won't do....you'd have to destroy it. But it'd be a fun experiment

Answer 5

Money exists strictly for efficiency. It aids the flow of exchange of goods and services. Removing money, doesn't stop commerce, it just makes it inefficient.

For example without money the apple farmer has to trade his apples for everything. What if I don't like apples, but I have something the farmer wants. I will sell him what he wants, but at a very high price, because I will have to resell the apples for other things that I need.

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Answer 6

money would just be substituted for bartering which is what society did before money.

i'll give you some of my cows milk for some of ya chickens eggs kind of stuff.

Answer 7

MONEY WAS NOT AROUND YEARS AGO I MEAN CAVEMEN THEY HAD TO FEND AND HUNT THERE OWN FOOD US WOULD NOT KNOW HOW TO DO THIS SO WE WOULD STARVE.The society without money would not work as to much greed is in the world would put a stop to this.
Sad world we live in sad society.

Answer 8

I've had many conversations about this. It wouldn't work because no1 would go to work, the nation would come to a standstill. Unfortunately.

Answer 9

@ first it wouldn't work. their would be chaos and confusion. after a few years we would eventually adapt. our society is very flexible, humans have survived through many traumatic events and we would adapt to our new society.

Answer 10

Hell yeah it would work and much better if you ask me. But it would only work if people were a bit more giving and alot less greedy.