Abolish Money?

Question

Hypothetical situation of course. Assume money was no longer needed for anything. Everything was "free", with the exception you are only allowed as much as needed to get through the day / week. This would in turn, abolish poverty. However, people still need to work so that the world could function. You would still be required to work 40 hours a week at your job so that the community can still function and provide for itself. Not really a question, but just an odd thought ive had that i felt the need to share.

Answer 1

Marx would say that even the working requirement would be unnecessary, as he considers fulfilling labor to be a necessity of human life. This ties in with the abolition of money as he believed that the enjoyment of the work itself should be incentive to work rather than money. Of course, many people argue that this would only work in an infinitely technological society.

Given that human preferences are so varied, I find it hard to believe that any central distribution center would be able to gather the information and calculate what amounts of goods would be necessary to keep people happy. That is the value of prices: their changes instantly give a signal of how much people want - which is often much different from what people actually need ^_^.

I would assume that in any situation like this, wants would still be around, and another form of currency would arise, such as cigarette currencies found in WWII prison camps, or the currency of the exchange of favors found in most political systems today. From this, you would still get relative poverty, just not to the extremes found today.

Nice mind exercise, by the way.

Answer 2

What about the people that don't or cannot work? What you are suggesting may be hypothetical, but truer than you think. Money will be abolished and people will start carrying embedded microchips on the hand or forehead that will let others know how much you have in the bank, who you are, where you live and even, where you are. Nothing has ever been free, is free or will be free. The person who has it wants to be paid. The thing about the microchip is that you will not be able to buy or sell anything unless you have the chip. Our National ID is a precursor to that day coming up.

As long as there are humans, there will be poverty. Something will always be out of balance somewhere. Man is too greedy to share. There's always a compulsion for more.

Answer 3

The problem is how do to make sure people don't take more than they need and actually show up for work. Unless you have a society of perfect people, you would need to monitor everyone activities. This could be anything from the the system the US has to prevent cheating for welfare recipients, which is very costly to administer, to a police state. The virtue of capitalism is that the controls for consumption and working are automatic. Income inequality can be reduced and poverty eliminated with income re-distributional policies such as those that exist in Europe, which are much more efficient than monitoring in your ideal world and which entail much less loss of personal freedom.

Answer 4

People have tried this. It's called communism. It doesn't work. The problem is, who controls the system and decides how the stuff is doled out? The reason poverty sticks around is that the hypocrites at the top take a much, much bigger piece of the pie than they need or deserve. Leonid Brezhnev types collecting lots of exotic cars and other perks ensure that this type of system will always fail, thanks to the flaws inherent in human nature.

Answer 5

In theory, it sounds really great. Realistically, I don't think it would work. Especially if we just suddenly took away money and expected things to run smoothly. At first, there would probably be chaos. People would run around taking what they could get and many would stop working. After a while, when things calmed down, people would probably end up trading their jam and it would become the currency. Then there would be people without jam and people with too much jam and it would basically be like it is now.

Answer 6

This is very much like the world in 'Star Trek'. A cashless society in which every person is equal and benevolent. Utopian experiments through out the years have all failed for the simple reason that "We" would all rather enjoy Ourselves than work in a coal mine.
I have a question: What is the incentive for hard work if there is no tangible pecuniary reward?

Answer 7

well that sounds pretty good to me, but it is along the lines of an anarcho-communism... and all people in one society wont stand for what it has to offer, people will disagree with this, and some people are greedy and want more.. with that in mind some people would refuse to work as a janitor without getting something in return ONLY FOR THEM and some people would not take orders from bosses at large corporations, because without money flow you cannot have a grip on society....

money flow is what keeps us having a government, without money we would fall into a state of chaos by human nature,

Answer 8

Sounds Communistic. It would be destined to fail because incentive would be lost and it would collapse or have to be enforced with a tyrannical government.

Answer 9

It's communism.

Answer 10

who would assign the work that has to be done to live?
we still need garbage men, plumbers..people who cut hair..
who would decide who does what then?
no one would want to work if they didnt have to..see welfare recipients...