Money- Necessary?

[B00]

This was a question asked by my 8 year old and one, which when I thought about it left me utterly stumped for an answer....

Do we need money to survive? What if the entire world didn't have it? Could it work?

[jomifl]

I can't see the IR surviving for long on eggs and goat cheese. Some less complicated societies do manage without money.

[Octavius]

ck1, its an interesting scneario, so all those things ultimately come down to natural resources, how do you get people extracting it and making it useful to humans, and how do you go about stopping the rape of the earth - some resources need protecting because of its rarity (oli, water, gold?), hence its price in current terms. Also, how would you stop someone else taking over your 'societal role' or taking your resource and depriving you of your sustenance?

[ck1]

Octavius, natural resources would be extracted in the same way as they are at the moment, as far as protecting the rape of the earth, I'm not sure we are doing a very good job of that anyway, take the money away and there would probably be less incentive to over-produce as the cost wouldn't need to be controlled due to their being no profit involved. Food wastage would go to zero as production would be based on demand. good point about taking the societal role though, I guess that could be controlled

[woofgang]

ck, so what happens when everyone decides they all want to go to the maldives and no one wants to work in the refinery that makes the plane fuel? One of the things that any kind of token for labour system does is shares around the treats and the rest. It may not share it around fairly but it does tend to even out supply and demand blips.

[Octavius]

Not only that, but where would they stay in the Maldives And what token service or offering would they be taking to the maldivian food providers and hotel owners? Presume it would be a working holiday..

[grasscarp]

Bartering at the Tesco checkout. Cant see this working .......

[Old_Geezer]

Money is, in effect, IUOs. Without an ability to show that someone is owed something then all deals can only be by barter, and become much more difficult. And achieving a high cost project is difficult without something, such as gold or gems, taking the place of money. Money is the lubricant that allows things to happen more easily. Things tends to grind to a halt otherwise.

[emmie]

so where do us city slickers put all these chickens and goats that we are going to barter?

[Octavius]

You can let them graze on my land (that I got in exchange for 18 continual years of service to the crown), but it'll cost you one sheep a month or a goat every two months (or any equivalent thereof)...

[emmie]

the thing about barter centuries ago is no one went anywhere, Lord of the manor owned all he surveyed, the peasants worked on the land, so they could have a barter system in place. nowadays we are just chickens in chicken boxes, called Barrett Homes, trying to schlep to work without killing one another, or the train, bus companies for their failure to get us where we need to go. Barter is good, in nostalgic minds, in principle it would be a dismal and expensive failure.

[ck1]

What if you remove the concept of being owed anything. Everybody just does stuff. You contribute to a high cost project (although it wouldn't be a high cost anymore) because you can. Gems and gold would have no value, what are you going to do with them!

[emmie]

by the time this is in place, the land would be all gone for people, more Barrett, Wimpey homes, and shopping malls for people who would rather shop than farm/barter.

[emmie]

well you can't eat them, so you would have to trade, and that my friends is where the idea of money comes into play, who has it and who doesn't.

[B00]

ck1 has got exactly where Mini Boo and I are coming from :-)

[emmie]

ok, so say i want to travel to the Caribbean, who determines how much it's going to cost in barter terms, 5 goats, 6 rabbits, and who would you give those to, the airline, the boss of the airline, can see Richard Branson, not liking this one bit or Michael O'Leary, it has a nice ring to it, barter, but it really it's practical in today's world.

[emmie]

isn't practical that should read.

[B00]

Who says its going to cost you anything? What if (yes I get it's a small if!) someone was going anyway and you hopped along for the ride?

[emmie]

but who pays for the fuel?

[Octavius]

Well if gems and gold had no value then time would be lost (quartz crystal) and communication would go scoobie (no gold for the satelites) so flying anywhere might be a problem.

I can't see this nothing having any value working though, because if that were the case, we could all get something for doing nothing. The problem might be (as is now) getting people to 'do stuff'.

[woofgang]

But how much contribution would be enough? There has to be some kind of fairness. Also what if no one needs what I can do in the project this year but last year people like me with my skill were in short supply? Does than mean that I can go off and consume more than I produce because no one wants what i can do?
I could see it working in a subsistence level community where there are very few different kinds of job, very little of any kind of choice and everyone has to work while they are able to do so.
The other thing that it doesn't account for is jobs that have unpleasant aspects. One of the reasons that people take these jobs on is so they can buy enjoyment.If you could go off and get that enjoyment without the unpleasantness, why do it.