The tangential points on the communist/socialist/capitalist spectrum, autocratic [hopefully benevolent] leader issuing edicts on what all will be provided, and fundamental changes in human nature to purge it of greed, laziness, or other vices are welcome, of course. But, they are tangents. The OP queries a society of humans, the supreme leader would negate personal freedom, and socialist economies use money as much as capitalist ones (the difference being the role of the state in the economy). “Pure” communism theoretically can dispense with money, but some shadow of it must still exist, at least as a unit of account. It is also nearly impossible to maintain a communist state without flight of the most productive members (commune collapses) or radical measures to prevent their egress (abridgement of personal freedoms). Then there is the matter of international trade, though the former SU did manage trade in raw or refined materials to some extent, though it later gave in and exchanged currency with its trading partners.
Yeah, the only moneyless societies I can see staying effectively moneyless are the very primitive (hunter-gatherers with every family unit basically self sufficient, with exchanges of goods rare enough that they don’t need to be formalized with currency) and the very advanced (like The Culture, where technological hyper-abundance provides anything an individual might want, and thus there’s no need to exchange goods with others).
What I can’t see working is a moneyless society at near our current level of industrialization. Our society depends entirely on specialization, and a society of specialists needs a way to convert the product of one specialization into a multitude of products from others. Any system that serves that purpose is going to be basically a currency, even if the implementation details differ.
You seem to be operating with the nuclear definition of family; I expect that they tend to operate on the extended definition, where the whole group is family. Some closer than others, true, but still all close enough to count.
I think it’s impossible given human nature. If we had evolved from something like bees or ants, then it would be possible, but given primate nature I don’t think it’s possible. Even if we had Star Trek style universe with replicators and holographic physicians like on Star Trek Voyager, there would still be competition and unfulfilled wants. Competition for authority and high positions would still be present, after all Enterprise only has one captain. Competition for mates would be present as well, as it isn’t possible for both Riker and Worf to end up with Troi, or for both Bashir and Worf to end up with Dax. Even for more mundane things like living quarters, there will always be the desire to be better off than your neighbor. Not everyone can live on the mountain top home overlooking the scenic valley or the home on the most beautiful beach in Bora Bora. Part of what makes those homes and places so desirable is the fact that they are isolated and don’t have a lot of people. If you built a bunch of housing in those areas, it would lessen the value for those who want something like that just for themselves. Basically, it’s impossible given our nature as humans.
I don’t think such a society is terribly difficult to imagine. The incentive to work would still be there, it would just shift from “earning money” to “maintaining a system in which money isn’t needed.” There are complications, for sure, but a lot of the questions being asked seem to be rooted in our existing paradigms. Who lives at the top of the hill? Probably the construction people who built all the houses lower down on that hill. How many units does the factory produce? However many the factory owner decides to produce, with the consideration that it’s in their own best interest to make as many as they can.
The question of yachts and other luxury goods isn’t as complicated as it seems, in my opinion. There would still be a finite amount of these luxury goods, but rather than being owned by the CEO’s of the world, they’d be owned by the yacht makers. I think bartering is unavoidable, but it wouldn’t be prolific, it would take place at the upper echelon of goods and services. Those who are at the top of their trade would exchange their skills with others who are also at the top of their trade (I’ll build you a yacht if you build me one of your supercars), but there would be no need for bartering for common-place goods and services that many people are capable of providing. I imagine it would be extremely meritocratic. The “rich” would simply be those with the most valued skills.
I didn’t want to bring up VR before as it’s a pet subject for me and regular dopers may be getting annoyed…
But if, at some hypothetical future time, humans spend a great deal of time within a vivid VR, and the VR is trivial to set up and run, in that situation I can imagine humans essentially living without money.
That’s not to say it would happen overnight – at first every aspect of VR will have a fee attached, and a hefty one at that, as the desire to log in will be high.
But the turning point will be when no-one even cares about accruing money anyway, as every wish can be fulfilled in the VR.
In such a scenario there may still be pseudo-currencies of various kinds, but I think ideas like being overall rich or poor, or having to exchange tokens for most things you want or need, will be essentially over.
That makes no sense, any time that A had something B wanted, there would need to be barter; the barter might occasionally end quickly with an “oh, I’ve got more than I know what to do with, just take some!”, but that would be B’s choice and it would be one of the aspects of the favors economy. My neighbor grows more veggies than she knows what to do with and she gives them away to other neighbors who do not have vegetable gardens but that doesn’t mean we can just walk into her kitchen and grab a batch. And she does want something in exchange: she’s not asking for money or for specific items, but when negotiations among neighbors come up she’s known to say “oh, after i was so nice to you!” to people who happen to be on the other side of whatever issue is being talked about.
That makes sense for your neighbor’s garden, but I’m referring more to things like large-scale farming. The farmer who grows wheat doesn’t strike up a bargain with each individual who wants a bag of flour. He simply passes his product on to whatever distribution chain there might be, and people go take a bag when they need it. And in exchange, the farmer knows that when he needs something, it’s there for him to take as well. The barter is implicit. Everyone contributes their products and services to the collective pot, and then they take what they need from the pot. The system works because everyone recognizes the contribution of other people in their own lives. The farmer knows that hundreds of thousands of people directly contribute to his quality of life, so he’s happy to contribute to theirs as well, with no haggling necessary.
It’s what they did for hundreds of years. Then we got large-scale farming, transportation, etc. etc., but each step involves trading, and each involves bargaining. Money makes the bargaining simpler.
The barter is not, cannot, be implicit. If people “just take what they need” that’s how you end up with each flatmate having his own padlocked fridge.
Which “hundreds of years”? Farmers have been selling their products primarily to and through collective resellers (like town silos) for a long, long time, particularly grain farmers.
What do you think was the last era where a bulk-product farmer - probably other than fruit or individual vegetables - sold his product directly to end buyers?
There were collective resellers and so forth for a long time, but still, that reseller? Bought and sold, or worked on commission. gallan’s premise is that there will be no barter at those stages; he only sees barter for luxury items. And for items that do not need treatment before resale, such as fruit which you mention yourself, or vegetables, or seeds? You can still buy them in small amounts and from the source now. Items such as cereals were moved mainly in bulk because they need treatment. In gallan’s world the miller would work for love of flour because hey, when he wanted a cake he’d just walk to the bakery and grab one.
I don’t think greed and desire are learned behaviours - they’re an innate part of what an animal species typically has to be in order to prevail in evolutionary competition. So I don’t think training to simply suppress it would work.
Yes, exactly. Why is this so unreasonable? Remember that this is a society that evolved without money or bartering at any stage. In a small tribe of ten people, your neighbor doesn’t demand payment for her vegetables, because then you would demand payment for whatever goods or services you provide for her. She harvests her modest crops and presents them for everyone, foregoing compensation in favor of on-demand access to the tailor’s clothes and the doctor’s medicine and the storyteller’s entertainment, etc. The barter is indeed implicit. It’s a social contract that everyone buys into. Greed and over-consumption are staved off by social pressures. Those who are unwilling to contribute, or who abuse the system, must find ways to be useful or risk becoming pariahs. The tribe grows and merges with other tribes and becomes villages, towns, and cities. In these cities, things have changed slightly but the system remains. You don’t walk into your neighbor’s house and take her vegetables without asking, but perhaps she contributes her excess vegetables to the local grocer who facilitates their distribution to others. And the miller does indeed work for the love of flour because if he can’t get a cake for his daughter’s upcoming birthday if he doesn’t buy into the social contract and provide his flour to the baker, nor does the baker get flour if he doesn’t provide said cake.
The concept completely overlooks the need to maintain balance in the bartering or whatever. If fifty people just walk in and take a bag of flour, how does the miller get assured value in return - even be sure that ‘what’s his’ will be available to take when he needs it?
You can make any system work with a small group of select people. It’s when you scale it to larger systems that most such ideas crash and burn.
Sounds great - but people’s hearts just aren’t that way.
You do realize that such societies had much higher level of violence than even NYC, right? Greed is staved off by your neighbor going “bonk-bonk on his head” if you started to get greedy.
Any time someone proposes systems such as these - political, economic, social, religious - that essentially require every single player to maintain a high ethical standard, or at least unfailingly follow certain arbitrary ground rules, you only have to throw one wolf into the mix to show how quickly it will fall apart.
We do most of the complex and inefficient things we do - politically, socially, economically and religiously - because there are always wolves among us. And always will be. Wishing them away or asking them to play nice forever is… absurdism.
Underline mine. I’ve lived with roommates several times, never people I selected or knew beforehand, and in most of those situations a few rules made it possible to share fridge and pantry contents without more than the occasional holler of “whomever left three drops of OJ in the OJ, may she get hemorrhoids the size of the OJ box! Don’t leave three fucking drops damnit!” But the one time there was one crazy control freak, that sharing went out the window. It doesn’t even have to be someone who’s nasty, just someone who wasn’t in kindergarten on the day they taught about sharing.
Oh, and if anybody is thinking “see, that didn’t involve barter!” Yes it did. At the beginning, when the rules were set! Anybody who was considered to be leeching would have been called up on it pronto.