What would happen if money did not exist?

Question

We did things simply to better ourselves and help others. No need to work to earn a living but to simply enjoy it with the company of others, to have what we wanted, but with self limits and understandings temptation.

Answer 1

excellent question! there are many different sides to this to consider, though. on one hand, we would have to resort back to trade and bartering for an economy most likely, which never really works because what if i need what you have but you don't want what i have? which is why we had money in the first place, as a universal sense of worth. i really don't think money itself, that little scrap of paper is the problem, it's the behavior that it inspires in other people, a scattering of morals for the ability to purchase material wealth. however, in today's economy, we need money. sadly, the world runs on money. you can't really get anything done without it. there really is no simple answer, which is why this is a fascinating question to ask.

Answer 2

It would never work. This is how things started remember. Eventually you start bartering. Your neighbor has some great veggies that you want, so you trade him a dozen eggs. Now the guy down the road a few miles has a cow, you want some milk. He says he doesn't want a chicken, but would like a new lantern, whichyou happen to have an extra of. You trade. Then eventually people discover that putting little rocks with holes in them make you clothes more ornamental, so now they are all the craze. they become used as payment for items......HMM. I think the American Indians kinda went that rout. they called it Wampum. Then some guy that is kinda powerful and manipulative convinces a few hundred people that he can help them all live together if they will only folow his lead and orders. Now he has become a dictator. He decides to conquer the town down the river which has great soil for growing food. Then he decides that if you are goign to work on growing food that doesn't really mean you have the right to have the food, so he establishes a way of compensating those who do the work and then they in turn can return the compensation and obtain the food their family needs.....wait, we are right back to where we are now.


basically it is a simple method of adapting.

Answer 3

There was a time, of course, when money didn't exist.
That didn't change human nature, however. Back then (just as now) most people didn't do "things simply to better ourselves and help others."
People used trade and barter instead and so they had to work for a living. There has never been a time (with the possible exception of "The Garden of Eden") when most people didn't have to work in some fashion to survive.
It's not money that's "evil" - money is neutral.
It's the LOVE of money that leads to problems. And if there were no money, it would be the love of power, fame, possessions, etc.
Human nature is the problem, not money.

Answer 4

Philosophically, that sounds nice.

Economically, it would lead to ruin.

Every society has had money of some sort, even if it just meant trading your deer hide for some other guy's spear. It seems to be a fundamental universal law that everything comes with its own value. To possess that thing, you must give up something of equal value.

Also, why do you go to work everyday? ("To improve my society," said Plato) You go for money. You work hard in school and at work so you can earn the money that you need to survive. You perform some kind of service so you can get little green papers to buy your bread and butter from Kroger. Without money, work ethic would not exist as we know it today. This is pretty much the basis of capitalism.

I agree with you on one point: Money plays too prominent a role in our society. But I am a teenager from the Allegheny region, and even I know that money is a necessary evil. Only some form of communism could manage a money-free society, and history has shown how well THAT works. A money-free society is impossible. Sorry.

Answer 5

On the simple survival requirements, a bartering society is perhaps less stressful, but no less violent. We are reminded of Cain's murder of his brother in an earlier society without money. Money is necessary as a symbol of value that transcends individual needs and allows commerce between two who would not otherwise barter their goods or services because they don't have mutually satiable needs. What is being used for this symbol is irrelevant. Without this symbol of value, none of the technological advances we know could have been made. Would an HDTV big screen television be available for 1000 bushels of green beans plus one 2yr old microwave oven?

Answer 6

I keep running into you! And I like your questions by the way.

My hope is if Money in any form that we would help each other not for the money but for the reward of helping. A doctor would heal to save a life instead of for the profit. The sick could be healed because they wouldn't have to pay for it, as so many cannot pay for it today. Of course I have noticed that humans seem to life off of money these days and if money was taken away we would find something to replace it.

Answer 7

Someone would still figure out a way to appear "better" then others-As in having more of something which in its self would then have the same effect as money, others would see what ever it was and want more of it. Some human beings are natural competitors.

Answer 8

THAT would be a perfect world. Heaven I guess. but that can NEVER happen here on Earth, people here are to greedy. they dont care if that guy has no money, they care about not losing theirs.people are selfish, we all have sinful natures. and besides, even IF this were the case on planet earth, there would always be some nut-job to ruin it. that guy, in his selfishness, would take advantage of others and work for his own, personal gain, crushing those beneath him. Soon, others would follow his example, and BAM! we would be back to the way it is today.

Answer 9

We would ensure that everyone was more honest. Like the old days from forever to the turn of the 20th century. Where your word was worth more than credit today. If you defaulted on your word everyone knew you could not be trusted. Today, no one can be trusted because of greed and credit that doesn't mean anything anyway other than another way to prove that your word is not good.

Answer 10

We'd barter and trade our other possessions. Because we all need to have some kind of sense of ownership of certain things, this will never change.
Utopia does not and WILL NOT ever exist. We're all too into our own individual self-preservation.