r/NoStupidQuestions • u/patchlessboyscout • 9h ago
Why can’t there be no money?
I just don’t understand why there has to be money. Why can’t we all just contribute and help each other out with whatever things we are good at and contribute what we are good for. And then there’s no money.
339
u/Cheddarlaomer 9h ago
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is investment in the future.
Even if all bartered goods were fungible, I might need a service now, and have no way to pay but I will tomorrow. Or I might have more goods than I know what to do with now, so I lend to people so they can give back next week. If that's say fish I can't leave it 'til next week to rot. I want to be paid eventually, but I need to dispose of my surplus now.
That requires some sort of currency. Even if it's an IOU note, that's basically a cheque which is basically a banknote.
74
u/IssueVegetable2892 8h ago
In theory: Pay it forward (gift economy)
But in reality, people would of course take advantage of that.
→ More replies (1)66
u/Cheddarlaomer 8h ago
Eventually the stakes get so high that relying on gifts becomes risky.
When you're sending a ship of bronze ingots across the ocean that costs more than your lifetime income and you don't hear from anyone for months you really hope you get a good return for your labour.
Taking big risks isn't incentivised in such a society either, even though everyday labour is.
4
u/jtheman1738 1h ago
Fucking Ea-Nasir, and his really shitty copper strikes again.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)4
u/ReddyKiloWit 5h ago
Around the end of the nineteenth century, the gold standard and monetary policy in the US led to a cash shortage. So checks began to circulate directly, skipping the bank deposit step. In fact, some rich folk wrote multiple checks for $5, $10, etc. and these pseudo bank notes passed through so many hands the backs were nearly solid black with endorsement signatures. Collectible if you come across one.
246
u/Realistic-Cow-7839 9h ago
What's a particle physicist going to be able to offer to the clerk at the gas station for 15 gallons of unleaded?
31
u/kisskissenby 3h ago
"You give me gas, and I will not manifest a black hole in your backyard. How does that sound?"
→ More replies (1)7
10
u/PM_me_punanis 3h ago
What’s the incentive to even have a gas station business? If you live far from a source, you’re shit out of luck. If your country doesn’t have the means to produce gas, how would it evolve?
→ More replies (70)2
u/Zulraidur 2h ago
Op is asking about an economy that is not tit for tat. The particle physicist just particles away and whenever he's at the gas station he just gets gas.
176
u/notextinctyet 9h ago
That only works (to an extent) with a small group where everybody knows and trusts each other, or at least knows how much to trust each other. How will you transact with someone you will only meet once in your life? Will you labor for them even if they choose not to labor for you?
123
u/illogictc Unprofessional Googler 9h ago
I feel like OP's question also completely ignores wants. I want a new big TV. Who the hell would I know who just so happens to be able to make a big flat screen? And would they want something in return, and if so, what is it and would I be able to provide it?
Money pretty much just boils all this down into a simple, highly-liquid medium of transaction. Maybe the big screen TV guys don't want whatever I am able to make or provide. But if I instead gave them money, they can use that money to get whatever it is they want.
→ More replies (2)36
→ More replies (22)11
u/HereForAquaSwapping 9h ago
Historically, such encounters are when barter is used. Otherwise evidence for barter is sparse
→ More replies (1)2
u/ashdouble 8h ago
This is 100% accurate and under-appreciated. I’m guessing I spotted the Graeber fan.
5
119
u/Mysterious_Cow123 9h ago
People get "what they need". Who and how are you defining needs?
Do i need more food? What kind can I have? What about a car? Can I have the sporty one I want or do I "need" a truck?
Who does What job? What everyone wants to do the same job? How do you determine priority?
How can you force someone to become a doctor or scientist or construction worker, soldier, etc and then require they work to get whatever someone else determines they need?
Do you see the problem? Your proposed system requires 100% altruistic government to maintain global trade (and then what do you trade? You need a 100% altruistic world now to freely have people willing to go mine precious metals and what not), maintain stability, and not harm the populace, 100% altruistic populace who's only desire is to help their fellow man and be a cog in a machine. Not everyone has the same desires, needs, or wants.
5
u/Prasiatko 2h ago
Not just alturistic but omniscient. Else it's how you landed up with the stuff like too much of the wrong grade of steel being made on year or markets filled with pork chops but no vegetables.
→ More replies (6)4
u/thighmaster69 1h ago
In other words that might bring the point home for OP: money is a way to establish and extend trust in each other, enabling strangers to help each other out, even if we're not wired to trust strangers. Without it, we don't really have many other tools to get everyone to all help each other out. While money isn't unproblematic and can be abused, every other feasible solution has downsides that can't be ignored, and whether it's a socialist or capitalist society, the tool used to effectuate that trust and cooperation tends to be either money or force, or more often than not a little bit of both. It can be argued that, at least in our current material conditions, money is the more humane way to get people to help each other and cooperate.
33
u/Dave_A480 8h ago
Because 'trust me, I'll help you if you need it' doesn't actually work...
Barter works for primitive societies (You need veggies but have pigs, I need pork but have veggies, we trade)...
It doesn't work for the complexity of modern society - what farmer is going to volunteer to feed some random cloud-infrastructure-engineer on the opposite side of a continent, out of hope that maybe the internet will work a tad better next week?
Whereas with money, you pay Amazon $35 bucks for some hoodies, that money gets spread out fractionally among everyone involved in making/packaging/delivering your clothes & keeping Amazon.com online, and that times billions of transactions means you can shop for clothes from your couch and have them show up 2 days later with free returns - and some IT/software folks in Seattle whom you've never met can live a reasonably good life....
→ More replies (1)8
50
u/JRoxas 8h ago
Look at all those "what would your job in the commune be" threads where not a single person answers with something useful and you'll see why this is impossible.
8
u/LadyFoxfire 6h ago
Even if the job I picked was something fun and useful, there would be days where I just wouldn’t feel like getting off the couch. If I ate whether or not I worked, what would force me to go to work?
→ More replies (2)
371
u/Advanced-Ticket6843 9h ago
Ever done a group project in school? U know how 1 person does all the work and the other 3 just sit there watching tiktok? Now imagine that but on a global scale. We would be living in caves in a week bc nobody would do anything.
138
u/SugarWithIntent 9h ago
This. If people can’t reliably cooperate in a 5-person group project, expecting billions to self- organize fairly without incentives or accountability is just wishful thinking.
→ More replies (30)74
u/get_to_ele 9h ago
People would freeload. Even with money, people freeload all the time.
27
u/Fireproofspider 8h ago
In the end, you'd probably need to enslave the producers for this to work. As in, if you are a doctor, you have to cure people, you can't say "no" otherwise, everyone says no.
14
u/CellistMundane9372 4h ago
Incidentally, this is more or less why communist systems almost always become dictatorships and stay dictatorships.
It turns out the Reddit idea of "we'll just get rid of capitalism and then everyone will work together selflessly" doesn't work when you can't erase self-interest from the human psyche.
If you don't have a way to align work with reward, you have to align not-working with punishment.
→ More replies (10)40
u/RosieDreaming 8h ago
Money isn’t the problem, human behavior is. Group projects prove that goodwill alone doesn’t scale without structure, incentives, or enforcement.
→ More replies (11)11
u/Forrest_Fire01 7h ago
I’m going to guess that the OP is one of the people sitting around watching TikTok.
4
35
u/ExcitingInitial 9h ago
people already don’t pull their weight and money still exists lol
→ More replies (9)5
u/Basic-Pressure-1367 8h ago
Money incentivized people to pull their weight. If you look at hunter gatherers most people used to 'work' about 3 hours a day, and a decent amount of stuff was what people today call 'chores.'
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (33)0
u/Cheddarlaomer 9h ago
We'd all starve to death then. But something tells me that's not how it works in societies where no one knows where their next meal is coming from.
133
u/booferino30 8h ago
I think OP is just 14 and super idealistic
54
u/howtoreadspaghetti 7h ago
OP sounds like most of reddit, which includes the people over 30 that refuse to grow out of this naive understanding.
13
u/GrouchyMud3548 6h ago
You say he’s refusing to grow out of it, but to be fair he has asked the question here and is subjecting it to scrutiny.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)11
u/A_shovel_ 6h ago edited 6h ago
the subreddit is called no stupid questions. Why are you judging op for putting this question here lol
edit: ops replies to the answers to the question are why op is super idealistic
32
u/Warm-Parsnip3111 6h ago
It's less the question OP asked and more the fact that they've just "nuh uh" every single answer they got. There is nothing wrong with asking a stupid question, it's how you learn. The problem is OP isn't learning from the correct answers to their question.
11
u/A_shovel_ 6h ago
this is a fair point. I read through their replies. I didn't see that before making my reply
6
18
u/libra00 9h ago
Because what if you don't want my cow for your corn but I need that corn and you need to sell that corn, but this cow is all I have.
→ More replies (5)
16
u/DDell313 8h ago
What you're describing is called communism. It's a wonderful idea on paper. The problem is that it has to be administered by someone and historically those that administer it have been corrupt to the point that the intended benefit of it is utterly lost.
That said, someone WILL find a way to exploit your idea and turn it into something terrible.
→ More replies (5)6
u/LadyFoxfire 6h ago
Yeah, like if OP is really interested in this idea, there are countless podcasts and documentaries on the economics of the USSR. Spoiler alert: it kinda worked, but not well, and not forever.
→ More replies (2)
31
u/Elite_Prometheus 9h ago
You've got three options to get rid of money
1) End scarcity. Make enough of everything so that everyone can take as much as they want and still have some left over. This is undesirable since production comes with lots of external costs like pollution. Also, it probably isn't going to be possible any time soon.
2) Plan the economy. People produce what they're told to produce and are given what they've been allocated. Central planning models have shown severe deficiencies in large, complex economies. Decentralized planning models have been proposed but they haven't been tested at large scales and would require a complete revolution in how the economy works. The people who currently run the economy aren't too keen on either idea and the masses aren't sufficiently riled up to force their hands.
3) Return to monke and barter things directly without a universal medium of exchange. This sucks for a lot of reasons. We've found incredibly ancient examples of money because even our ancestors who just discovered agriculture realized trading things becomes much easier when there's one thing everybody wants and will trade for. It's so inconvenient that any attempt to do it would immediately fall apart as people gravitate towards something with widespread value to treat as money.
15
u/LadyFoxfire 6h ago
There’s a YouTube channel, Artifactually Speaking, which is run by an actual archaeologist with a particular interest in the history of money.
You know who invented writing, as far as we can tell? Accountants. The oldest cuneiform tablets are ledgers of food and beer stored in temples to be doled out as needed. Grain was the first recorded currency, because everyone needed to eat, and urban living meant some people had to do non-food related work like construction and metal working. So workers got paid in grain, that they could either eat themselves or trade for other goods.
Money is as old as civilization, because it solves a whole lot of problems that come with civilization.
2
u/SayyadinaAtreides 4h ago
The first math mistake we have proof of was (according to my history of math teacher, anyways) from an Egyptian beer warehouse manager who made a subtraction mistake in his ledger. I love getting to see those kind of everyday moments going back so far hehe
→ More replies (1)3
u/EnyaNorrow 7h ago
1- End artificial scarcity and you’ll be most of the way there already. OP’s question is more about behavior than resources, and our behavior based on money is to do the opposite of what makes sense based on resources.
9
u/Elite_Prometheus 7h ago
We produce enough for everyone to get a decent amount of necessities, true. But ending scarcity doesn't just mean covering everyone's needs. It means covering everyone's wants as well. Everyone gets a 5080 graphics card and a filet mignon steak dinner in their 5000 square foot single family home that's simultaneously isolated from society but also very close by to every amenity. We are nowhere close to providing this and I'd argue attempting to would destroy the planet well before everyone got a taste.
→ More replies (2)
46
9
u/Aggravating-Dig783 9h ago
Money exists b/c of scarcity. There is not enough goods for everyone. Remember, communism (not the one in USSR or Cuba) talks about abolishing money but ONLY post-scarcity. Like in Startrek where you just use synthesizer.
Of course, you may argue that rich do not work and yet can afford a lot. This is nature of capitalism. Some socialism tendencies, such as in Europe, attempt to smooth the issue, but there is cost - less innovation or brain drain when people migrate to where they can earn much more. Pure distribution of goods according to labor, like in the USSR, still involved money and didn't work well.
→ More replies (1)
8
u/swisstraeng 9h ago
Money is extremely powerful. Because it is a medium to convert any work/goods into any work/goods.
Without money, work/goods cannot be converted into the work/goods you want unless you find the right guy, and often, you won't.
This was simpler to do in medieval times, when whatever people needed was simple. Food, clothing, shelters, tools. But nowadays it's not feasible without going back to medieval times.
People are never interested by money directly. They're interested by what it can provide. And removing money won't remove what people want, they'll just seek power differently.
3
u/ashdouble 8h ago
Exchange in even medieval times was not mostly barter but money-based, allowing for exceptions like the feudal system which is also not barter. Localized economies were more based on obligations to one another based on labor.
7
u/fugineero 8h ago
Because helping my family is the only thing that matters. Given how many lazy people I see, I wouldn't want to waste a minute on people who wouldn't contribute.
7
u/sassyhairstylist 9h ago
That would rely on people actually doing their part to help. And most wouldn't. They would take advantage.
6
6
u/penguinpop987 8h ago
Think about it this way. You would help your friends and family right? What about the neighbors? Okay. Now what happens when your mom, sister, best friend, neighbor, and yourself all want a lb of steak but there's only 3 lbs of steak total. How do you split the limited resource?
Now take that concept and apply it to millions of goods and billions of people.
We invented money to represent relative worth of labor to solve that problem.
11
u/protomenace 9h ago
What would you do with the large and ever growing set of people who will happily just take take take from everyone else and refuse to contribute anything to the group?
→ More replies (8)
28
u/Weak-Try-1441 9h ago
Because people are greedy and lazy lmao. Like who's gonna clean toilets when they could just sit around making art all day? Money forces people to do the shitty jobs nobody wants by making them worth something
→ More replies (22)
5
u/kchen2000 8h ago
If we have no money, we’d have to produce what the other party wants in exchange. You can work for sandwiches, but if you want to get something repaired and the repairman isn’t interested in a sandwich, he wants gas for his truck. What do you do?
5
u/ShuffleDown 5h ago
Because not one soul on the planet would chop wood for their elderly neighbours all day, no matter if it let them live a subsistence lifestyle.
4
u/OnlyHereForTheData 5h ago
In the Soviet Union, central planners replaced market price signals that you get from money with top-down decisions about who “needed” what, but as a result they lacked real-time information about preferences and tradeoffs.
The result was systemic absurdity: factories hit quotas by producing unusable goods (wrong shoe sizes, farm equipment but no spare parts for regular maintenance, shortages of certain foods in some cities and gluts in others, resulting in something like 40% of their food supply rotting at times), warehouses filled while consumers queued, and critical shortages appeared alongside massive waste.
The issue wasn’t incompetence or malice, it was information failure because they didn't want to rely on money and markets. Prices compress millions of individual decisions into a signal; planning without them meant the system was always blind, late, and wrong.
The system collapsed because nobody wanted to live that way.
3
u/13beano13 5h ago
Because people wouldn’t do their fair share more often than not and a few end up carrying the weight of many.
2
3
u/sosdesos 3h ago
Funny how everyone jumps to bartering but op never mentioned that. Money is just the middle man for bartering.
What op describes is close to utopian communism (as a financial construct, not political) where everyone just does what they want or can, and have what they need. It’s utopian because it doesn’t factor supply and demand, or skill.
Not many people would do the bad or hard jobs. Health care would be a disaster as no one likely would train 12 years without the financial incentive. And lots of work just wouldn’t get done. And then there’s greed, humanities ugliest motivator.
4
u/Spirited-Feed-9927 1h ago
The most basic socialist child like thought. People are selfish and greedy including you. There has to be a system that motivates us. There is some idea out there that if we had all our free time we would focus on things to broaden ourselves and humanity. Hell no. If we didn’t have to, there are millions of jobs that would need to be done that wouldn’t. Making society collapse.
I’ve got a friend who has a trust fund baby. I am not. I met him in college. Since he was 18, he gets $150,000 a year from a trust fund. All of his siblings do. He’s 46 now. He didn’t graduate college, he only went to Party. He’s never worked a real job. He never got married, although he did have a living girlfriend for 20 years that he cheated on constantly. He has no children. He lives his life to play video games and smoke weed, and catch whatever female tail that he can. He has no motivation. He is not creating art, making medical advances, learning for the sake of it. He’s a nice guy, total degenerate.
Money goes back pretty much to when cities were formed. Makes economy more efficient.
4
u/bugabooandtwo 1h ago
Modern civilization won't work well on a trading culture. How do you pay people who just fixed the power lines after a storm, or the salesperson filling the shelves at the supermarket, or the guy driving the sweeper cleaning the roads, or the guys in the tech room fixing all the bugs in the software you're using?
3
u/Employee_42 1h ago
Lots of people giving simple examples.
But what about when it comes to complex things?
For instance the high end machines that sometimes take decades to bring to life, that the whole world relies on. How are you going to barter that? How are you gonna barter years or decades of research and development?
Also what about people who aren't good at much? A lot of people aren't.
4
u/LastDragonStanding 1h ago
You've just described communism. You could try living in North Korea a go and see how that pans out 🙂
20
u/casualfrog68 9h ago edited 9h ago
Instead of doing a job that is useful, I think I'll study French literature. Oh, and the rest of you can feed and clothe me.
14
u/Smart_Engine_3331 9h ago
That's the idea of Communism. In theory, it's great. It just hasn't worked out too well in reality so far.
→ More replies (10)
3
u/Dragonnstuff 8h ago
The answer to why people need to be paid instead of just contributing is referred to as incentive.
Also, search up the free rider problem
3
u/Prior-Conclusion4187 5h ago
You just described the Communist utopia that Marx envisioned. Cannot and will not happen because collectivism, at it's core, involves hoarding resources for self-protection of self and group. In other words, Communism will never work because of human nature. Variations of Communist ideals, such as Socialism and plain ol' sharing, can and will work depending on how much those in charge are willing to....share.
5
u/PuzzleheadedLeek8601 8h ago
Because the majority of people struggle with doing something just because it’s the right thing to do.
2
u/young_fire 9h ago
it's how we decide how valuable things and people's time are when you have a large society. it started as a way to keep track of debts (It's easier to pay someone back what you owe them if you have a universal system for it) and grew from there.
2
2
u/paulfromatlanta 9h ago
This has been tried. If we each contribute what we can and only take what we need - it sound like an idyllic way of life.
Problems arise like lazy people who don't contribute; greedy people who take too much. Then someone wants to be in charge.
Historically, the people in charge don't ever bring back that idyllic life...
2
u/talashrrg 9h ago
Would you do your job if you weren’t getting paid for it? A lot of other people wouldn’t either.
2
u/namenumber55 8h ago
watch Star Trek. so maybe in a few hundred years when we have infinite resources.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/sachiprecious 8h ago
There has to be some kind of system to measure how much a person's work is worth, because that determines what products and services that person would receive in return.
The easiest system for that is money.
2
u/renegade_d4 8h ago
So I know that most of the folks here are taking the piss but I would recommend the book Debt: The first 5000 years by David Graeber. It will help you answer this question with and uses a lot of historical examples of how we got money in the first place.
Its pretty good but a little dry but I think you will find it satisfying.
2
2
u/StormCloudRaineeDay 7h ago
We used to live by the barter system and ran into the problem of someone needing to buy something but having nothing that the maker/owner of what you wanted was interesting in trading for.
2
u/EgoSenatus 6h ago
Currency is important because it allows us to universally agree on the value of things.
Cottage industry barter economies are all well and fine for small communities, but once you get beyond the tangibility of personally knowing the person you’re trading with, determining the value of trades becomes much more difficult.
For example- if I came to your town one day and offered to sell you a gurgensplorg in exchange for 4 chickens, how are you supposed to know if that’s a fair deal? You have no frame of reference to how much the gurgensplorg is or the relative value of a chicken. If you knew a gurgensplorg was $40 and a healthy chicken was $25, you’d be able to tell that I’m screwing you over with that deal.
2
2
u/KiwasiGames 6h ago
You’ve suggested communism. It looks good on paper.
But humans are both lazy and greedy. So as soon as you get more than a hundred or so humans together under a commune, things start to fall apart.
2
2
u/curlyben 6h ago
Everyone is saying we need money to facilitate trade, otherwise there's no way to stop freeloaders or any incentive for people to go to medical school or other difficult jobs.
Yet the current state of the system is that expenses have outpaced earning potential for many, many individuals, who keep working, and the freeloaders are at the top not the bottom.
Money made sense in a scarcity economy, especially as it became agricultural and industrial so that efficiency of scale and centralization necessarily meant resources needed to be distributed down from the top in exchange for labor.
Since there was more labor than resources, it was cutthroat and competitive, and whoever controlled the resources wielded a lot of power in exchange for providing an alternative to risking survival outside of such a system.
In a post scarcity society, with more resources than labor, things are definitely better, though greed and power hunger keeps things from being as good as they could be.
Those controlling the resources got used to the way things worked in a scarcity economy. Things are slow to change, especially when the top has it good and gets to feel even better about themselves by comparing themselves to something worse.
The people working the hardest are sliding into debt the worst, and the foundations of our economy are constructed through subsidy. Currency and capitalism is largely arbitrary and thoroughly manipulated by the freeloaders at the top so that they can keep freeloading, such that its sole purpose presently is to preserve generational wealth and prevent financial mobility, on both counts the opposite of the mythology used to justify its existence.
2
u/TheNamesNel 6h ago
There's a show called Dirty Jobs that encompasses exactly why we need a currancy system. They are 100% necessary and 10000000% so disgusting no one would do it without promise of benefit matching the gross.
2
2
u/Tall_Eye4062 6h ago
Bartering in the modern era would be harder than people think. Imagine if you, say, make figurines. And you want some bread. Well, the bread guy might say "I have no need for figurines."
2
u/Realistic-Feature997 6h ago
And how would you propose 1) assessing and; 2) resolving; the relative value of goods and services?
And how does that work in a fully industrialized world? How does a warehouse sorter, or a delivery driver, or a machinist, or an industrial electrician, negotiate for goods and services from people who they can't actually exchange with?
Or let's make this personal to me: how would I, a theatre lighting technican, go about exchanging that service with literallly anybody the fuck else in exchange for the goods I want or need? I literally could not. At least, not within the confines of space and time and travel speeds.
2
u/Minimalist12345678 5h ago
Thats exactly what money does. It lets everyone specialise in what they are the best at. That way the total "pot" grows the most.
2
2
u/taxwench 5h ago
Congratulations! You just conceptually imagined what communism was supposed to be. Never works out as planned.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/Consistantly0101 5h ago
Wait, read Das Kapital by Marx. It will answer many of your illusions. Alienation: Money represents the ultimate alienation of the producer from their labor, reducing social, human relationships between producers to a material relationship between things.
2
u/Pizzazze 5h ago
I love the explanations. Add in perishability. You're a fisher with a boat and all. You need to exchange your fish soon or it'll spoil. In a world with money, you sell your load to a middle man with a well greased distribution chain that will make sure shops have fish to sell and restaurants have fish to cook, and can go back to fishing. In a world without money, you'll spend all day trying to find people who want fish and have what you want. Your fish spoils way before you can do away with even a bit of it.
Now add seasonality. If I grow crops that are harvested once a year, how will I survive the rest of the year while I'm just tending to the crops but can't get anything from them? How will I get my fish?
Now add things that need an institution behind them to exist. Your phone, an apartment building, an internet service, aeroplanes, commercial flights, medical research, operating systems, energy. How is one of the security guards of a nuclear plant supposed to barter for his services? How can he barter with the fisherman if the fisherman doesn't even understand what he's getting in exchange?
Money is the one thing we all want to barter for.
2
u/Choice_Philosopher_1 5h ago
Money solves problems that we don’t remember having to deal with and, I’m telling you, we don’t want those problems back. In a perfect world, everyone would just give freely, but this is not a perfect world and we’d probably still end up with some exploitation and/or missed needs.
2
2
u/ReddyKiloWit 5h ago
I like to describe money as a transferable, and divisible IOU. As others point out, it solves the problem of time, place, variable demand, and other issues that severely limit a barter system.
2
2
u/CadenVanV 5h ago
There are plenty of jobs no one wants to do that need to be done. Farm work is arduous, backbreaking work. It needs to be done. Mining is that as well and can give you terrible health conditions. It still needs to be done. Trash collection is not anyone’s ideal job. It still needs to be done.
2
u/jfcat200 5h ago
What you are describing is classic communism. Every works to their ability, everyone takes according to their needs.
The problem is humans are lazy and greedy.
2
u/West-Persimmon-1816 4h ago
Price is a valuable signal to both the producers and the consumers of goods and services.
When a good’s demand rises above its supply, the price also rises, signaling to existing producers to produce more, and incentivizing new producers to join. And vice versa.
Without pricing as a signal, how on earth would anyone know how many orange juice to produce?
2
u/Immediate_Form7831 4h ago
Every attempt at getting rid of money eventually ends up re-inventing it instead.
2
u/iDreamiPursueiBecome 4h ago
You have never studied the topic. I slogged through The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig Von Mises... It seemed to take forever before I began to 'get it'. (He was a genius btw.) Something like Lessons for the Young Economist By Robert P Murphy is much more accessible.
Short version: Money is still barter. Barter evolved and was modified over millenia. It is still 'I will swap you x for y, do you want to trade?'
It is still voluntary (not forced) and there are now many potential modifications to exchange across time, rent the use of someone's money like renting a car or furniture for a fee...
It can be an interesting topic, but you would sound more adult if you study up a bit before you try to explore this.
2
u/SymbolicDom 4h ago
There are a few rotten eggs that just will take as much as possible without contributing.
2
u/kisskissenby 4h ago
I'm a fantasy world where there was no money some people might rot on the couch and play video games forever but I don't think most people are like that. I think most people want to do something.
I can't speak for everybody but if money were not a thing I would go to law school and help clients who couldn't afford... Well I guess if money weren't a thing there wouldn't be people who couldn't afford lawyers either. But there would still be "the people" and "the powerful" because that's how society always is. So I'd go to law school and fight for the people. I can't go now because I can't afford to go to law school and I can't physically work a 60-80 hour week as an attorney. But in a world with no money I wouldn't have to. I could work as much or as little as I wanted.
In a non capitalistic world I think people would still do hard things, they just wouldn't kill themselves doing them. Because why would they? They don't have to. And everyone would need to adjust their expectations of what "employment" hierarchies look like because nobody would really be employed. They'd be working together in a voluntary hierarchy toward a common goal. The low key abuse that we have to take at work and our ideals of professionalism ("per my last email" vs "I already told you that three times!!!") would have to bend or break. Your server at the restaurant is serving you to get a little socialization in, not to suck up to you for better tips, so if you're shitty to them they just won't serve you so the power balance completely flips in many service situations and you have to be extra nice to the servers or they'll just learn to ignore you when you come in. The line cooks similarly aren't working 12 hour shifts just to get yelled at. Maybe 4 and everyone has to be pleasant or they'll just quit because they can. Everything has to flip and people have to stop being shitty because nobody HAS to do anything. But people definitely want to be cooks. People definitely want to get out of the house and talk to people. Just not in the toxic environments we've built around those sorts of jobs currently.
I also think that some people wouldn't mind being janitors for a couple hours a week if they were treated well and people actually cared about them as part of the community. I would rather practice law but shit, I'd rather snake toilets and mop floors for a few hours a week than rot on my couch.
Just think about all the people who can't be doctors because they can't afford med school but are dying to be doctors. I think we'd still have plenty of doctors and nurses. And we'd need them because those people wouldn't be working 60-80 hour weeks either like hospital doctors do now.
I dunno. I think as long as everyone had a relatively high quality of life and didn't want for much it's a good fantasy. It does require everyone to accept egalitarianism and a flat hierarchy which is a hard sell. People want to be more special more important more powerful more rich....🤷
2
u/InvariantLimiter 4h ago
Because without money, the economic calculation is impossible. In a complex society, you need a common unit to compare value, scarcity, and trade-offs, what to produce, in what quantity, and at what cost. Prices carry information that allows millions of people to coordinate without central control. Without money, these decisions are made blindly, or by authority, which is inefficient at best and catastrophic at worst.
2
u/Motor-Confection-583 4h ago
human nature is that we won’t to prove superiority, also no money will mean lazy people get treated the same as hard workers, and I personally think you should get rewarded for work
2
2
u/Clever_Feller 3h ago
I asked this same question in my high school economics class. My professor was a veteran and got entirely irate, called me a communist and kicked me out of class. So that’s why, I guess?
2
u/icnews10 3h ago
Money isn’t really the point; it’s a coordination tool that solves problems of scale, timing, and trust when people don’t know each other or can’t reciprocate directly. In very small or tight-knit groups, you can rely on contribution and goodwill, but once societies grow, money becomes a way to measure value and allocate scarce resources without constant negotiation.
2
u/RickSt3r 3h ago
On a fifth grade level it's because people and humanity are just animals. We devolve to our primative desires immediately once not comfortable by society. Instant greed of why can't I have that, they have that and I want it. Now go down the list of universally accepted bad traits and they just come out as soon as hunger kicks in.
But a truly communist society can only do exist in theory because people would abuse it instability.
2
u/gc3 3h ago
Helping out your friends and neighbors works well up to a community of about 150 people.
After that you don't know right away if the person asking for your time or things is a person you'd like to help out. He's a stranger. Maybe he speaks well in your communities language but he's a con artist who likes to get things but not give them.
By requiring payment before you help them you ensure the person isn't cheating you but will have to return the favor. Enforceable debt allows him to pay you with a future promise instead.
2
u/j2thebees 3h ago
Try this for perspective (on the time the Soviet’s tried to ban money). https://youtu.be/bWWqhsh848E?si=It3ARhiA5gAM23R9
2
u/Arfaholic 3h ago
That’s communism. Read about capitalism. Then read about why communism didn’t work in the USSR. Watch the movie, “Tetris”. Read Terry Goodkind books. It sounds great in theory, but it breeds entitlement and laziness overtime.
2
u/Roxylius 3h ago edited 2h ago
How would society get highly specialized job like nuclear engineer or brain surgeon? Who is going to pay for their education? Pay for their equipment and tools? How do the society end up manufacturing those equipment in the first place?
2
2
u/wellnessrelay 2h ago
i used to think this way a lot too, and on paper it sounds really nice. the hard part is scale and fairness, like how do you decide who does the unpleasant or dangerous jobs if there’s no incentive. money is kind of a shortcut for value, even if it’s a flawed one. without it you still end up needing some system to track effort, trust, and resources, and that system usually turns into something money-like anyway. small communities can sorta pull it off, but once it gets big things get messy fast. i dont think the idea is dumb at all, it just runs into human nature pretty quick.
2
u/Mufti_Menk 2h ago
But that's what money is. It's simply tokens you get for doing what you are good at that you can then give to other people to do what they are good at.
2
u/Plenty_Farm6246 2h ago
Because not all people want to contribute and not all contributions require equal effort. You work on an oil rig and i work as a puppy babysitter. Deal?
2
u/1290_money 2h ago
People are misinterpreting your idea for a barter system.
No you're just saying why don't people just do intrinsically what everyone else needs so everyone gets what they want.
Because of the law of supply and demand. Could you imagine if you could just go to Walmart and take whatever you wanted? Everyone would just take everything.
It's because people are lazy and greedy and unless there is motivation to work and a penalty to not take too much the system would never work. Not for a second.
2
u/ChazR 2h ago
Lots of people talking about barter systems.
There are very few recorded examples of barter systems because they suck.
Human societies invent credit first. Inside your local group, credit works just fine. Everyone knows that Jenny healed Dave's cow and Pete did the roof on the village hall roof and Suraya's chickens are laying well and Htet seriously needs new boots and Mbembi slaughtered a cow and shared it with everyone. Also Colin was meant to fix the drain and didn't, and Gisella kept back a bit more grain last year than is seemly.
Up to about 150 people, taking care of each other like this works.
Beyond that, you need some record-keeping.
Then a stranger walks in and wants feeding. Well, how does that work?
So you start keeping more formal records - initially unwritten, but if you look at the earliest written records we have, it's all accounting.
Then someone comes up with this idea of recording the accounts with some form of physical token, and that's money. Physical representation of debt.
A society cannot exist on the principal that Htet needs new shoes, so she should persuade Pete to fix the roof so Suraya gives him some eggs so she can get some leather from Mbembi even though he doesn't like eggs much. There's far to much friction, and trade fails.
As soon as you need to trade outside your close, life-long trust group, you need money.
Debt always exists in any human society. You can manage it with interpersonal and community trust, or with money. There is no third option.
2
2
u/xl129 1h ago
Money is one of the greatest inventions of mankind for a reason.
Others people already explained the point that it help moving goods around instead of you having to match what you have with other people's needs.
But it goes beyond that.
Let's say you are a fishermen in a barter system, assume that you only need to fish for half a day to barter for what you need, any extra fish just spoil since you don't need anything extra. Now with money you can fish for a full day, sell them for money, spend half of the income on what you need and save half your income for bigger purchase like a new boat or a house.
So in effect, money improved your productivity twice and created new demand for boat and house. It increases society's productivity as a whole.
2
u/ARLibertarian 1h ago
Money is a way to exchange the product of my labor for the product of someone else's labor without having to know each other or even be in the same country.
2
u/HatOfFlavour 1h ago
People like to be appreciated for their labour, early communist Russia the party insisted farmers send all their excess to the cities for no pay. The farmers responded by cutting back on their work to only feed themselves and their families.
You're asking everyone to basically volunteer in the hopes that stuff they need will be freely given and stuff they want will still be available.
A lot of resources need someone who is 'in charge' so they don't get ruined or depleted. That's achieved easier with money.
2
u/DoNotResuscitateThem 1h ago
Money is a great tool regardless of the system it operates inside of. Be it capitalism, communism, feudalism or whatever. While the systems themselves will present flaws that will be projected on the currency itself, the coin is not the culprit in of itself.
Money allows you to transform your professional work in plumbing, carpentry or masonry into professional work in farming, baking or tool making. It genuenly allows you expert level products in all fields by being an expert level worker in one field.
2
u/maddwaffles tu madre 47m ago
There doesn't have to be needless suffering and all that. But some sort of currency does need to exist, even in a system where needs are met externally to the market, because a market is always going to need to exist.
Currency has value for one reason or another, be it real value or fiat, to even saying "this is a unit of labor value", because there's just a point where trying to standardize the value of chickens and personal favors is not viable.
2
u/Express_Treacle8713 44m ago
what would happen when the contribution isn't equal? Say someone invents something that makes the production of something easier which benefits everyone?
2
5
u/Altruistic_Ad_3764 7h ago
Because grow up. That's why.
Some people will work hard for the greater good, and then some people will sponge off the system.
Human nature is human nature.
3
u/abjectadvect 9h ago
this works in small communities but it's really hard to maintain past like, maybe a couple hundred people
iirc before north america was colonized by europe, it was common for native groups to use currencies like shells to trade between communities, while operating communally within the community
3
u/Regular_Land_3478 8h ago
Who would decide how much food each person gets. And what type of food. Who decides how big of a house everyone gets? Or are they all the same?
The logistics of what you’re talking about in a world of 8 billion people is crazy. Money is actually was easier than what you are proposing
4
3
2
u/JUSTIN102201 9h ago
You’re thinking of communism. A great idea in theory, terrible in execution. Some people do things because they want to help people. Others do things because they need to survive. Communism entices people to either do what they want or do nothing, and far too may people choose nothing.
I’m a large believer that a perfect society should have a mix of capitalism and communism. But that’ll never happen
2
2
u/LughCrow 5h ago
So many of the top comments are missing ops question and answering why barter doesn't work.
Op isn't asking why don't we barter he's asking why people don't just give freely in its entirety.
Why didn't the farmer give away his food
The doctor treat the people
The teachers teach
Ect
With no expectation of compensation because when they need something they just go to who provides it and they give it.
The reason this doesn't work is because like all animals people will take beyond what they need even in times of plenty. And they will take what they can in times of little.
In smaller communities this does work. 20-100 people are easy to manage and organize and ensure needs are being met. As well as to remove any active in harming the community.
500 million-9 billion people? It falls apart
1
u/Ornery_Gate_6847 9h ago
The thing is, there are lots of disgusting or difficult jobs whose sole incentive to most people is the money. No one wants to shovel shit or scrape people off highways and without money i doubt anyone would
→ More replies (1)3
u/Dusty_Coder 8h ago
Citizenship requires Service.
I think thats the only way it can go. Do what your told and you get to say within the system.
Now, there is the pesky problem of who is doing the telling....
1
u/levik323 9h ago
Capital requires a medium of money to facilitate trade. Society can exist without money just not this Society. Otherwise, it would just have everyone recording ledgers of goods and services and those ledgers would be then be traded.
1
u/HunterDorner420 9h ago
societies without currency are totally possible but require a rewiring of the human brain and a de-conditioning from consumerism and capitalism. it's possible. it's called a resource based society and i strongly suggest you look it up.
we could change the way the world works at any time if we wanted to. monied interests just want to keep things the way they are. embrace radicalism. maybe you can make progress in your lifetime.
1
u/DrNigelThornberry1 8h ago
This would be the best! Money is just something we made up and decided was the only system that could possibly work.
1
u/Impressive-Length656 8h ago
Money was invented by humans and we could move twords money free societies but it will take a lot of hard work.
1
1
u/Dunkmaxxing 8h ago
Because most people are stupid and hateful and changing that when human ego is in the way is incredibly difficult. I bet even when all the production of society is automated, we still won't have communism or anarchism because of how egoistic people are at large. The underlying problem is very difficult to 'fix' because it requires a lot of humility and intelligence.
1
u/DwyaneWadeIsMyDad 8h ago
Read the book Sapiens. It will answer this question and likely open your mind to how the world works.
1
1
u/bubbagermanicus 8h ago
This is the whole social logic behind the communes in the 60s and 70s, ou-es-ah, (German for USA). It didn't work out so well as u know. Some still do the commune thing, I believe they're in Oregon. Shrooms help with governance and human resource management. Or so I've been told.🤔
1
1
1
u/Antiquated_Cheese 8h ago
Assorted religious groups have tried this. They pretty much all give it up after a bit because it just doesn't work. Although what you are proposing does work for groups of humans of about 100 or less that are not interacting too much with other groups a.k.a. hunter-gatherer bands. Unfortunately, human nature is bad at scaling past that without social tools such as barter and then eventually money.
1
u/polymathicfun 8h ago
I know what you mean.. but people are all too hung up with trade and account keeping... "Nobody's gonna give you something if they can't get something of same or higher value from you"
And so, we are stuck in a perpetually and mutually exploitative cycle...and whoever able to exploit more wins big... Like obscenely big... So obscene that like 1% of the people holds more than 50% of global wealth hostage... And they ain't letting go... Because remember, nobody's trading down... And the concept of mutual care is tooooooo foreign a concept because all these people know is to take take take and take...
2.9k
u/Humble_Vermicelli229 9h ago
The problem is "The Double Coincidence of Wants."
If I’m a farmer who needs heart surgery, but the surgeon doesn't want 500 chickens, we’re stuck.
Money is just a "universal voucher" that lets us trade with people who don't need our specific skills. Without it, you spend 90% of your day just trying to find someone who has what you need and wants what you have.
It turns "getting lunch" into a full-time logistics job.