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The money-less society - how it would work

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No star here laces

10:01 / 03.01.03

So if we assume someone has constructed a society without money - how would it work?

Please don't debate whether or not doing away with money is a good thing - we have debated this before (perhaps a moderator would like to provide a link? I am too lazy...) Just offer up suggestions as to how it might work, in all its aspects.

I think it would be a good thing if criticisms of prior posts were accompanied by a solution to the problem that the criticism points out, but this is merely a suggestion...

12:39 / 03.01.03

Is it safe to assume that in this money-less society people still need to be re-imbursed somehow for any effort they may expend for others? If so, bartering would work until someone decided to offer a 'token' of some sort that could be redeemed with the distributor at a later date in lieu of actual goods. Then you've got the beginnings of a currency and the whole thing starts again...

Unless of course anyone found offering 'tokens' was punished severely.

One thing that would help a money-less society work would be limitless resources - no-one wants for anything, people do stuff for other people out of the goodness of their hearts etc. (shades of Iain Banks' Culture here).

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:09 / 03.01.03

Well, another option is civics - make everyone aware of how vital the work they are doing is to the community, and how, if they do not do it, then the community they inhabit will collapse, and they will ultimately suffer. That leads into the Marxist "from each accoridng to their ability, to each according to their need" thing - people work to maintain the community, and are rewarded in kind with food, accomodation, living comforts and so on. Of course, if people are rewarded unequally depending on what they do, then, again, currency (in the form of "labour units") is creeping in through the back door again.

Another problem is that it might be very difficult to justify a lkot fo professions supported by capital (like telesales) as "vital"...we might have to reorganise so a lot more people are producing food and working in technology; if trade functions (i.e. exchange is allowed without but not within the community or state) then other professions could also be justified, e.g. creating more televisions than the community actually needs because it is easier to swap televisions with another state or community for something than it would be to manufacture that something yourself.

Which sounds a lot like Syndico-Anarchism, really...

13:35 / 03.01.03

The only way I see for an economy without a "commodity of exchange" to work is to forbid private exchange of goods and services. The market must be outlawed. Goods must be doled out to each member of the community according to (a) the wish of an iron-fisted ruler(s) or (2) collectively by vote of the entire tribe. Though it pains me to write it, and makes me sound like a fellow at the Cato Institute, without a market of some sort, you don't get to decide what you need. Your share of the goods produced by the community is determined by what's best for all the members of the community. No matter what work you do, you don't "deserve" any reward for your labor.

Once private exchange (in the form of barter) is introduced, "commodity fetishism," usury and speculation, the things that are most despised about the "free market" quickly follow.

Of course, if a commodity of exchange could be designed to combat usury, etc., the market might take a completely different form.

14:35 / 03.01.03

Of course, if a commodity of exchange could be designed to combat usury, etc., the market might take a completely different form.

But who would regulate what everything in the marketplace would be worth? A cow would be worth/have more of an intrinsic value to a farmer with other cows and the means to best utilise it (produce milk etc. for further barter) than the office worker who can't feed and house it. But to the office worker a pen would be worth more etc. You could loan each of the above persons their 'most needed' item for a greater return than if it was the other way round...

Technologically poorly advanced cultures that had no concept of money would struggle to advance as I can't see a way of them being able to offer services to one another without the need for a tangible return. And there is only so much 'stuff' you need to get by. Once you had enough to do you for a while you could withdraw your labour until you needed to bargain again.

And I have trouble justifying telesales as a "vital" profession even in our hyper-capitalist society.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

07:55 / 04.01.03

Once private exchange (in the form of barter) is introduced, "commodity fetishism," usury and speculation, the things that are most despised about the "free market" quickly follow.

bit of a slippery slope argument there. None of these things are intrinsicly embedded in the barter. It could develope completely differently.

Also, why do "Technologically poorly advanced cultures" need to advance at all. Maybe homeostatic society are a good thing. If everyone survives well enough that they don't feel they need to work more maybe they are right?

13:11 / 04.01.03

Also, why do "Technologically poorly advanced cultures" need to advance at all.

...he says, posting on an Internet message board.

One of the big problems with a moneyless society is art and recreation. How do you handle the film industry etc?

01:55 / 05.01.03

Money seems to spring up because people are competing for things. It might not be novelty items, but something very practical. Early people competed for foods, and maybe for better hunting and farming instruments. Still, this competition doesn't create an exchange system until some people realize they don't personally have to get the food, or they don't personally have to make the tools. If the wants of a person are only those xe can make himself, then xe has no need for money. This might be expanded to a slightly larger group (say, a family), but really needs to be kept pretty small.

Another possibility is that genetic engineering will lead to a society of people, all of whom happily work for the good of all and none of whom desires superfluous material goods. If the work produced a surplus of goods, then no one would see this as an opportunity to benefit himself. Xe would either save it and produce less or distribute it to those who have not finished producing all that is needed.

pointless and uncalled for

11:54 / 05.01.03

While the Culturesque and civics directed responses of Haus and Lulla do seem to be the most ideal options, how do you manage the issue of dissent in either of these cases?

In the curency and capital societies of today the option to opt from the use of money poses no problems and therefore is allowable by law. However, in the event that you formulated a society that is restrictive then wouldn't monetary activity form at least a breach of social contract if not a breach of law.

This isn't to debate whether or not it would work but to seek to determine if the issue of dissent could be properly managed within the bounds of human rights.

13:29 / 05.01.03

This isn't to debate whether or not it would work but to seek to determine if the issue of dissent could be properly managed within the bounds of human rights.

Normally I would argue the opposite, but money is a boon to personal freedom. It allows us to do want we want instead of what someone else considers productive, provided we can scrape together enough cash to get by. In a moneyless society, how do you decide who gets to be the actor and who must be the garbage collector? How do you make arrangements for self-publishing, or art for art's sake?

No star here laces

07:41 / 06.01.03

To go with the flow of this discussion - maybe we should settle another issue first.

The use of money as a means of exchange and a regulatory device clearly has good and bad consequences. Which are which? Which is the baby and which the bathwater?

Usury was mentioned, and this seems the most obvious adverse consequence - a system of exchange where simply possessing units leads to accumulating more units is not desirable, to my mind. What are the others, do you think?

Phex: Dorset Doom

13:12 / 06.01.03

Potus got back said: "However, in the event that you formulated a society that is restrictive then wouldn't monetary activity form at least a breach of social contract if not a breach of law."
Seeing as money is the primary way that power ebbs and flows in our society, a money-less society is very likely to be an Anarchist society, one without 'laws' as such.* I can't see western civilisation devloping organically into a money-less society, there would have to be some kind of popular movement and a revolution of sorts.
After the revolutionary period and with the slate wiped clean hopefully people would organize themselves according to whatever branch of leaderlessness appealed to them (Anarcho-Communism, Anarcho-Capitalism or Anarcho-Primitivism). If these three different cultures could exist peacefully, and there's no reason why they shouldn't, then there would be a process similar to the consumer freedom that capitalists espose, people would choose the most efficient 'product' and everything would progress.

*That is not to say that a 'Wild-west' style of lawkeeping wouldn't develop where order is maintained by a consensus morality, what Immanuel Kant called a 'categorical imperitive', enforced by those who feel strongly about ideals of justice.

pointless and uncalled for

14:33 / 08.01.03

In interesting comment given the amount of crime related to money. (non-snippy comment)

14:54 / 08.01.03

If these three different cultures could exist peacefully, and there's no reason why they shouldn't

Except human nature, of course.

15:45 / 09.01.03

I see two possible scenarios.

In one, a Marxist ideal of anarco-communism. Possible only in small tribes, each member works towards the benefit of the tribe, sharing all resources and products as needed. You work/hunt/cook/whatever because the tribe needs it to survive, and thus you are working for yourself. If one is found to be hording resources, one is punished by the tribe accordingly. Thus equality is kept out of necessity and survival. Of course, once you have a surplus and in increase in leisure time, this starts to break down into more organized social systems, eventually leading to trade, unless somehow you are all perfect Buddhists who desire nothing. Yea. right.

The other is Star Trek, where the advant of the replicator technology had rendered need completely unknown. If you have the magic box, you don't need to do anything. You can live a comfortable, if dull, existance with any material thing you desire available to your whim. Clearly, this is not acceptable to everyone, which is why a trade based system evolves on top of that for those willing to do the work to advance civilization, mine diluthium crystals or other goods unavailable from the replicator, explore space, or kill invading Romulans. All important jobs that someone has to do, and thus some form of reward will be necessay, even if it is only the prestigue of having done it and the rank to tell other humans what to do.

Come to think of it, could rank be used as a replacement for currency? If you do your job well enough, you get entitled special class privleges. You have to continue doing your job to keep them. So, you get rewarded for effort, but without the need for money and trade to be involved. You get status, which comes with certain powers, so there is still something to gain by initiave.

16:07 / 09.01.03

Come to think of it, could rank be used as a replacement for currency? If you do your job well enough, you get entitled special class privleges. You have to continue doing your job to keep them. So, you get rewarded for effort, but without the need for money and trade to be involved. You get status, which comes with certain powers, so there is still something to gain by initiave.

Wouldn't this just be dressing up the "problem" in new clothes?

17:50 / 09.01.03

What precisely is the "problem", then?

18:22 / 09.01.03

It seems that a rank-based system as you describe it would continue the massive inequities present under the current money-based system. But presumably, if we were to shift to a moneyless system the whole point would be to eliminate the problems associated with the current system, and I don't see how the rank-based scenario you describe would do that.

However, the "problem" is off-topic, judging by the abstract, so we'd better start a new thread if you want to discuss it.

No star here laces

08:21 / 10.01.03

Way back in head shop pre-history we had a monster thread all about money, which I was going to link to, but it seems to have vanished, so I guess if you want to debate that you should start one.

Does anyone know much about Gift Economies? I heard that they had one operating in the Mondragon region of spain for a while. As I understand it the general principle is that if someone gives you a gift, then you are embarassed into a greater act of generosity, until a bargain is reached. I must confess that the logic of this kind of evades me, although it does seem a nice idea, so please provide more detail if you can...

I suppose another alternative currency model might be to use a unit of exchange that cannot be stored - fruit for example. You can't store fruit for longer than a few months without turning it into something else (e.g. frozen fruit or jam) which would then no longer have value as currency, only as commodity. That would stop it accumulating.

I wonder also if there is any way of linking currency exchange to the community good - suppose people were 'paid' in community service hours, so that if I do a job for someone they pay me by allowing me to designate how 2 hours of time are to be spent benefiting the community. Everyone in the community would be required to contribute a set amount of time per week in labour, and this pool of time would be the total amount of currency in circulation...

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:06 / 10.01.03

On the "alternative currency" model - the Spartans, IIRC, had a system of exchange based on iron bars,. the point being that iron bars were so heavy and of so little value that to carry around enough of them to buy anything would have been near impossible. Unfortunately, this meant that Spartan generals were famous for going doolally whenever they travelled outsdie Sparta and were confronted by big piles of gold, usually in the hands of people without the best interests of Sparta at heart...

11:11 / 10.01.03

I wonder also if there is any way of linking currency exchange to the community good - suppose people were 'paid' in community service hours, so that if I do a job for someone they pay me by allowing me to designate how 2 hours of time are to be spent benefiting the community.

Not very appealling for those more interested in personal freedom than economic prosperity (not that the two aren't linked)...

12:13 / 10.01.03

Let's think bigger than fruit and iron bars and those big stone wheels they used in some parts of Micronesia- this is the 21st century, you know. In this age of monorails and personal jet packs, who wants to be hauling fruit around, anyway?

Not to get too William Gibson about it, but who wants to carry around material currency of any sort - money is just information, right? A "smart card" (which could take any form really, from your standard AmEx plasty to a chip behind your ear) could automatically depreciate your currency if you didn't spend it quickly enough - is that enough "economic stimulus" for you, supply siders, eh? eh? Or, if all the money in a system is located "on" smart cards, all money could be attached to a centralized interest rate system, meaning that categories of "saving" and "spending" money could evaporate - all money, whether in pocket or in the bank, is equal.

If we're talking implanted chips, how 'bout one that monitors the "work" your body performs, in a strictly biological sense - how much ATP your cells use, how much glucose your brain is taking up, etc. People who burn off more body-fuel are doing more work, and thus would get to be rewarded more in terms of what you can take from a central storehouse or what every crackpot command economy scheme we wish to cook up.

12:49 / 10.01.03

Hey, this is fun!

A "smart card" ... could automatically depreciate your currency if you didn't spend it quickly enough

How would you save enough money to buy a car or house if your payment installment was lower than the price of those things?

If we're talking implanted chips, how 'bout one that monitors the "work" your body performs, in a strictly biological sense - how much ATP your cells use, how much glucose your brain is taking up, etc.

I don't know much about biology, but doesn't this work differently for different people? My understanding is that an overweight person burns more calories walking to the store than an underweight person does. Wouldn't biological quirks create a level of inequity here? And what about jobs that don't require much physical exertion?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:11 / 10.01.03

Am I missing the point here (I warned you I was going to get involved with the Head Shop again)? A lot of ideas here seem to be along the lines of getting rid of the coins/notes that we currently use and replacing them with other things which we use instead. Do not these things become a form of currency too? In fact, just as a £5 note until recently was supposed to be exchangeable for five pounds of gold which in turn could be exchanged for whatever society deemed to be worth five pounds of golds worth of labour, are we not then adding another layer of representation on the top?

No star here laces

14:53 / 10.01.03

You are technically right, but I think these ideas are still interesting and fun, so bring it on. We might want to specifically address the question of what aspects of money are worth keeping and which aren't - at the moment the working topic seems to be "what kind of replacement can we dream up for normal money which avoids the problem of rich people accumulating all the resources?"

16:01 / 10.01.03

In effect, using different forms of money, even virtual currency on smart cards, only changes the way the money looks. Its still money, and the systems of trade and usuary remain unchanged. If the goal is to discuss how moneyless socety would operate, you need to do away with tradable units of wealth altogether. And to do that and still have a functioning society, you either need some form of communist shared resources, a different abstract way to reward effort that does not have the same societial effects as currency, everyone must be completely self sufficient, or some combination of the above. The question is, how can any of this be done? Do we really need replicators before we even have a chance at pulling this off?

16:11 / 10.01.03

"what kind of replacement can we dream up for normal money which avoids the problem of rich people accumulating all the resources?" - BB

Surely you don't mean that. Simply changing money is unlikely to produce anything more than cosmetic change. In order to reorganise society along lines that don't encourage disproportionate or unjust accumulation of power and resources you need to make structural changes to the way things work. For instance, Parecon attempts to describe a way in which this might be done. You can agree or disagree with the specifics there, but I think there are good arguments that quite radical changes would be reequired to bring about some the changes you are outlining.

20:38 / 10.01.03

Things will always be worth more than other things.

The rock over there will be bigger than the rock over here.
Jane is stronger than Jill and can lift more.
Joe will be a better mechanic than Jack, no matter if Jack has better tools than Joe.
You get my point.

I think it's somewhat hardwired into the system to economize anything. "How much is it worth to you?" is proof of this. And there will always be people who will bully, hoard, or coerce other people so that they get a bigger share of the pie. And there will always be people who lose their share of the pie, or through medical necessity, need more pie than their neighbor.

Only through all of us becoming utterly homogenized can we eliminate the money system. I suggest a combination of eugenics, cloning, and culling of any non-productive members of society.

In short, money/currency's more of a giant ghost of a concept than an actual thing. Like un/fairness, like love, like religion. These things are hard to kill.

::aphonia::

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:32 / 11.01.03

Are we going about this the wrong way then? Would we have more luck attacking the concept of 'worth' which is probably a more modern invention in evolutionary terms than 'money' (or the concept of same)?

Phex: Dorset Doom

17:49 / 12.01.03

We can never get rid of 'worth', just as we can't really get rid of right and wrong, only adjust the parameters so people see, say, feeding their tribe/commune as preferable to buying a speedboat full of hookers.

Lurid, I looked at the ParEcon site and a statement on one of the e-books gave me an idea. In 'Socialism as it was meant to be' the authors make a flip remark about 'holding a lottery' as an alternative to determine who gets the economic spoils of any productive labour. And why not? In a neighbourhood, office, commune or whatever give each person what they need to survive on a pro-bono basis but each day give a different randomly selected person some credits, say a hundred, to buy luxury items (cars, big TVs, etc.) People can save these credits in an equivilent of a bank account and to avoid the problem of unfair distribution the credits can't be transferred or taken. Randomly allocating money in this way would solve the problem of individuals accumulating so much money/property that they become inequal and able to adversely affect the lives of others.
This is only a thought, and a half serious one at that, can anyone think of a variant of randomly allocated economics?

15:22 / 16.01.03

Caught the tail end of an article on LETS on You and Yours on R4 this lunchtime.

Digging round the 'net yielded this site

The site mentions using the Pound Steling as its currency, but the radio article talked about 'KENTS' (after the River Kent) that had no relation to 'real' money.

Basically, from what I can see it is a system where people get apportioned LETS/KENTS for use within the community for work done for the betterment of that community.

Okay, so not moneyless exactly, but not a bad effort. More comment when I've had a chance to digest more of the site.

Constitution Hill

00:19 / 17.01.03

How about the gift economy - in this form of barter you try and give more than you get, but not too much more. On first glance this will end you up with a net loss, but its an attempt to ensure that everyone is finding or producing something that is needed - everyone is continually contributing to the public good.

Also, what inheritance laws would pertain in a moneyless society?

12:05 / 17.01.03

I agree with the posters who've said that maybe the way forward is to change the function(s) of money, and what it's allowed to do. If we accept that there will always be some form of money, however token, then if we can aim to prevent it from causing the problems we have diagnosed in the modern world, then that may be in effect the same as a moneyless society. If money becomes once again simply a counter for an exchange that is taking place, then it recedes into the background, and, we might say, ceases to exist.

According to my non-existent knowledge of economics, circulation of money = good for the economy and hoarding = bad. Mention has already been made of money which loses it's value when not in use, which I think is an excellent idea. It's something which has been debated amongst money reform theorists all last century, and was even tried in a bankrupt town in Austria in the 30s who issued notes which had to be stamped that they'd been used, in order to remain valid for the month. So everyone kept buying and selling stuff, and apparently it worked really well until someone tried to use it outside of the town and they got busted.

Obviously there are pros and cons of this sort of thing, but I'd have to agree with any idea that prevents the concept of making money from money. The whole modern concept of credit and speculation, of granting money existence in itself rather than being merely a counter for things.

Maybe the first step towards changing, or reclaiming the nature of money would be to ban speculation and all that finance malarkey?

No star here laces

12:57 / 17.01.03

Mm. I think the trouble is that loans are very useful for poor people who want to better themselves. Access to credit, if used wisely and without punitive interest rates allows people to set up businesses or produce goods that can then be sold for profit and benefit the economy. The difficulty is how you eliminate speculation but still somehow manage to fund some means of extending credit. Or indeed find an alternative to credit.

Another thought is to try to eliminate the employer-employee relationship and replace it with the payment relationship. i.e. I don't work for you, you buy the products of my labour off me - I own what I produce. this allows workers to benefit more from the mechanism of markets as they can hawk their produce to the highest bidder. However there is obviously a negative pay-off in terms of security of income. However this may well be more than compensated for by the increase in dignity and freedom...

would someone care to give a brief summary of participatory economics? i remember trying to plough through that site some years back but finding the lack of a potted summary frustrating. Most of us don't have enough time at work to read through that site...

14:58 / 18.01.03

would someone care to give a brief summary of participatory economics? - BB

I'll give it a try, though it is bound to be overly simplistic and I may get some things wrong. Nevertheless...

In ParEcon, you have things called balanced work complexes that are democratic entities whose function it is to decide on what work needs to be done and what people would like to do. The overarching principle at work is that everyone contributes to the common need. So everyone does a bit of shitty work as well as work that they'd like to do. Also, people get aid according to effort with compensation for undesirability of the job.

Brain surgeons clean bed pans. Mozart gets paid the same as Britney Spears, for working the same hours - effort, not talent is rewarded. (However, doing a paid job you want requires some justification of social benefit, as I understand it.) Also, you don't get money for property, bonds or shares. You only get money for actually working.

Note that there is some form of money here - and contary to BB's suggestion, I would argue that in a society where resources aren't limitless, you really do need some form of abstract exchange system.

Essentially, things are set up so that there is virtual equality of wages and consumption. (One point is to challenge the capitalist assumption that consuming and earning money are good things per se. In ParEcon, if there isn't community work to do, you can do what you want.) There is also equality in the amount of "empowering" work people do - the shitty jobs are shared.

Thats the barest bones of it. Try reading this page for a less skinny outline.

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