I don’t need money, as long as I have my credit cards.
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.
But imagine if there was no money. It’s easy if you try.
How would we keep score?
Social capital has been suggested as a substitute for money in a psot-scarcity society. If the value of goods and commodities become vanishingly cheap in such a society, the measure of your standing and reputation will become more important than the value of the products you own or can consume.
See
There have been a number of suggestions about how to measure this social capital; Cory Doctorow’s Whuffie system relies on universal internet connections and reputation indices
To be honest whuffie worries me somewhat, since a popular and likeable sociopath might corner the market in rep points, while a modest and retiring hermit would become relatively impoverished.
Money is the grease that allows modern society to function, and it won’t function without it despite whatever dizzy dreams some people have of that.
If all the currency and money was removed by some form of magic other mediums of exchange would spring up immediately.
Human primates do too, but it’s considered acceptable to welsh on the deal.
I’m intrigued. Let’s say I’m a mathematician, and love doing proofs. In your society, how do I get food for dinner tonight?
Isn’t money & wealth based on knowledge and contribution here and now in the real world ?
So not that different from money, then 
Oh Lord. Do I really need to explain what Money is again?
Who needs it? If I want to buy a car from you, why can’t I just give you 5,000 chickens? Money is evil and just makes things complicated.
The Bank of England (i.e. the UK’s central bank) published a couple of nice articles recently explaining what money is, how it is created, and how the amount of money in the economy is really controlled. I say “really” because they cover a couple of misconceptions, such as the idea that they enforce some ratio between broad money and central bank reserves, the so-called “money multiplier” approach.
Money is a Concept. An Idea. It is nothing more than a means of exchanging widgets for chickens for beans for hours of labor. No individual thing is ‘money’, rather things are assigned relative (and often fluid) values that are represented by numbers we call “money” which allow us to exchange these things in a reasonable and largely consistent manner.
“Money” doesn’t create the idea of “profit”. If our world revolved around barter, most people would still grok the idea of being able to form their barter trades to end up with more of what they want than the other guy.
Without money, people would still barter drugs or sex for the goods they need. After all, they aren’t doing this for some fictional idea of ‘profit’, they’re doing it to survive, or to have more than they would have if they were not doing that.
As I say, if the concept of Money did not exist, we would be forced to invent it before we could have anything even remotely resembling a modern society and economy.
And finally, an old quote of mine: “If you want to know what God thinks of Money, just look at who he gives it to.”
[QUOTE=eburacum45 ]
To be honest whuffie worries me somewhat, since a popular and likeable sociopath might corner the market in rep points, while a modest and retiring hermit would become relatively impoverished.
[/quote]
Quite.
Here’s a not entirely serious analysis of a reputation-based merit system that shows that reputation would follow similar rules of distribution to a money-based economy.
The Reputation 1%
For the most part, it is.
I understand how reputation is currently distributed. But how could it be used as an exchange medium? If Paris Hilton bought my car would she somehow transfer part of her fame to me? Could I then use that fame to buy a big screen TV from somebody else and somehow make them famous? Could a celebrity spend their way into anonymity?