Edit: After I wrote this, and looked at the length, I don't honestly expect anyone to read this - but it sure felt good to get it out
@Anyone that thinks the status quo works
Whenever you mention doing away with the Monetary system, people always have extremely thoughtful and reasonable arguments as to why this just wouldn't work. Rightly so, they usually posit the following:
1) A Barter system isn't satisfactory, especially on a large-scale.
2) Things used to be way more unequal than they are now (Feudalism, apartheid etc)
3) Without money, how would you get the things you needed (car loans, homes, food etc)
4) Without a monetary system, no one would have an incentive to work, society would collapse
Let's say, hypothetically, that
somehow I convinced you that we could do away with a Monetary system. I then would propose a society which is completely and utterly different from the one we live in now. A society where there is no currency, and the culture and general zeitgeist of society is completely devoid of the concept of property. The ability to eat, and have shelter, and be healthy, is no longer determined by you having money. These 'rights' are viewed as fundamental. Having described this type of society you will get usually two types of responses:
Closed minded people will usually respond with:
1) That sounds like communism. Communism doesn't work; that has been proven.
2) If everyone got food and shelter without having to work. Everyone would be lazy and society would collapse.
More thoughtful people will usually respond with:
1) You are describing a Utopia. People are inherently greedy, it just wouldn't work.
Let's say then that I convinced the closed minded people that people are in-fact not inherently lazy. That human potential could be so much more than devoting 40+ hours of your week to sitting behind a counter selling cigarrettes and lottery tickets. Just as human beings were able to branch out into the sciences and begin to understand the world around them when we changed to a sedentary society from a hunting and gathering society, so too could humanity realize greater intellectual heights if we were freed from ridiculous labor to earn a wage. Even if this argument doesn't sway you, let's pretend it does, just for the sake of this argument.
And then let's say I convinced the more thoughtful people that:
a) I'm not describing a Utopia, I am simply describing a society which hasn't yet existed, and therefore cannot be described with currently extant terminology.
b) Your belief that people are inherently greedy is due to the fact that you grew up in a capitalist culture.
Then they would say-> People have been greedy since the dawn of time, so are animals, it is linked to survival and natural.
Then I would say -> Scarcity of resources is the cause of greed, scarcity is no longer a reality.
(Then they would say) WHAT!? Scarcity is no longer a reality? Are you telling me that we have the infrastructure to support everyone on the planet, moreover, are you telling me the planet has enough resources to provide for everyone!?
And I'd say: Yes.
Now let's pretend that I've somehow convinced you of everything up to this point, except as to whether or not Scarcity is a reality (that somehow there is enough in the world for everyone to live prosperously).
We then must make one logical statement:
IF Scarcity=True THEN X for me, X=Monetary system got us to this point, but obviously something is wrong since greed is destroying the planet and will increase scarcity
IF Scarcity=False THEN Y for me, Y=Why the heck are we denying so many people in the world health, food, and shelter?!
Scarcity definitely existed in the world at one point; but at our current level of technology as a species, it doesn't have to be so. We have the ability to feed the world; we have the ability to clothe and house the world.
-I've been to India, I've seen entire sections of cities with house, after house, after house, all empty; not because of lack of demand (there are millions of homeless in India), but because no one has enough pieces of useless paper to exchange for entry into these homes.
-I've been to farms across the country where miles of fields are left empty and not used, because the government is paying them NOT to grow food in order to keep the price of food down.
-I've been at budget meetings of the A.C.O.E. and other government agencies where staff has intentionally wasted millions of dollars on flights they don't need, or equipment they have absolutely no use for, simply because if they don't use every single penny of their budget, they will be allocated less money next year.
-I've been to factories filled with workers, who's jobs could be automated by machines over night. Yet the machines aren't placed there because the workers need the jobs in order to get pieces of paper that say $ on them.
Is this not the very definition of insanity?
Now to the crux: We can do better than the Monetary system, we don't need wages and money to make the world work. If we got rid of all the dollars, cents, fiat currency, bitcoins, you-name-it, right now. We would still have food, we would still have computers, electricity, machines, blankets, cars, airplanes, space-shuttles and Mountain Dew.
Incentive is not the driver of human industry. Knowing that if one works hard enough he may someday live in a mansion, and drive an amazing car is not a driver of human industry. That incentive structure will result in the society we have now; where investment with an oblique or episodic relationship to production reigns supreme over actual physical innovation, where planned obsolescence of technological gadgets is more profitable than actually making something work, and where short-term investments with high-yields are more appealing than long-term investments with sustainable futures.
The driver of human industry is freedom to pursue our passions, and as long as we are de facto slaves of the monetary system, we will always have to work to prolong the status quo.
So what now then? The world never changes because people point out flaws in the current system, the world changes when people provide an alternative which makes the current system obsolete.
There are so many intelligent social engineers out there that have numerous solutions to these problems. (e.g.) Roberto Unger
We have the science, infrastructure, resources, everything needed to change the world, all we lack is the political will.