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What would happen if there wouldn't be any money?
- Thread starter ndee
- Start date
XZeroII
Lifer
You are thinking of money as cash. What you are proposing is impossible because "money" is actually anything that is commonly accepted as having value (or something along those lines). There always has been and always will be a form of money. Back in ancient egypt, they used bread as money because bread was tough to make and thus valuable. We might just barter or something, but sooner or later, a standard form of currency would evolve.
rocadelpunk
Diamond Member
barter system, of course we'd be set back to the simplest of times and our economy would fail and be highly inefficient...but hey.
Eventually we'll realize we can specialize.
Eventually we'll realize we can specialize.
PowerMacG5
Diamond Member
I think ndee is thinking along the lines of Star Trek, where there is no currency on Earth anymore. In Star Trek, they abandoned money, and the Earth became a very prosperous, united world; where everyone worked for free, and got what they needed. I guess ndee wants to know if this will happen in real life. I don't believe so because human nature dictates everyone would take a nice comfortable couch, and pull it up to your TV.
Siddhartha
Lifer
Let's think of one scenerio. There are 100 workers making an airplane. How do you pay these workers for this airplane? Do you trade it for a million loaves of bread, dividing that evenly amung each worker? Then, what would each worker do? You can't put bread away in a savings account, it gets bad. So, they'd then have to spend their time trading their excess bread for more durable goods. As you can see, this is horribly inefficient, and there will always from now on be some form of currency. We've seen the advantages that currency brings to the world, so we will always find some form of money. In WWII POW camps, they used cigarrettes. Some Native Americans used shells. In our modern economy, going to a no money system is impossible. Unless we go back to the days where everyone killed their own food and grew their own crops and made their own goods, bartering will never work.
Well, how do you define money?
Money is merely something that stores value. As such, there is always money. Taking steps to eliminate certain forms of money that are widely accepted, for example, U.S. Federal Reserve Notes, would result in more inefficient value storage devices being used.
Production is enhanced by an efficient financial system and private property rights. If you mess with either of those things, you hinder production.
jeremy806
Money is merely something that stores value. As such, there is always money. Taking steps to eliminate certain forms of money that are widely accepted, for example, U.S. Federal Reserve Notes, would result in more inefficient value storage devices being used.
Production is enhanced by an efficient financial system and private property rights. If you mess with either of those things, you hinder production.
jeremy806
XZeroII
Lifer
The only reason why it works in startrek is because of replicators. If you want food, you tell the machine and the machine creates it out of thin air. If you want a new couch, I'm sure you just go to a special building and tell them exactly what you want and they replicate it, then transport it to your home. No costs or anything.
GigaCluster
Golden Member
I don't know if you realize this, but what you're proposing is Communism.
As you may know, it has been tried in the Soviet Union which failed after many decades of making everyone miserable, and it has also been tried in Cuba, where it is still desperately trying to hang on although everyone hates it.
If you're really interested in this, I recommend reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."
XZeroII
Lifer
The problem is that there is always someone who has something that someone else wants. For example, you might have a solid gold bracelet that someone else really wants. Discounting theft, that person will try to offer you something that he/she has in exchange for your bracelet. This is known as bartering and will always occur as long as someone has something that someone else wants. Eventually, currency is born so that we don't have to be trading 20 chickens for 1 cow.
Imagine that what you "can do" is make bread. Now somebody else in your economy makes watches. You want a watch. The problem is, he doesn't give a jack about your bread. So how do you get a watch? You need to hope that you can find something that the watchmaker wants that you can trade your bread for (ie, go from bread -> gloves -> pants -> watch or some shite like that). Imagine what a pain in the ass it would be to barter for anything that way.
Money allows you to "pay" the watchmaker in a way that he can convert that money into anything else he wants.
Also, as others have mentioned, money is more easilty transferred through time (ie, saving or borrowing) than durable goods would be.
Pepsi90919
Lifer
you've never taken an economics class have you.
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