do we really need a money system?

[hunter]

148. I think this would be an interesting experiment.

The basic unit of "scrip" as you call it would be for everyone, working or not, and represent a person's share in the overall economy. It would cover enough for safe basic shelter, healthy food, and a few extras. We would all be "trust fund" children of the nation itself. Education and medicine would be free for everyone too. Then a basic hourly labor unit for simple, unskilled, no-risk labor, rising to some small multiple of the basic hourly labor unit for highly skilled, high risk, or unpleasant work, a multiple certainly less than ten; in effect saying no single person does the work of more than ten men or women.

There would be no taxes, this would not be money. The notes or "bits in the computer" would simply be created or destroyed as necessary, according to very strict rules to keep system stable. Hoarding money or wealth would be impossible, wealth that was not kept circulating, wealth that was not "shared" would simply cease to exist. Property and property rights would exist in the sense that everyone would be secure in their place, but there would be no monetization of property, and in the overall economy no borrowing or lending or "financial markets."

It wouldn't have to be a centrally planned economy at all, in fact the rules would be set up to dissipate great concentrations of power; set up to discourage oligarchies, political machines, and dictatorships. The democratic force countering these would arise from the "one share, one vote" we all had in the overall economy.