How do we end up in a world without money.

June 9, 2009 2:16 PM

Book filter: Is there a book out there, fiction or non-fiction, that outlines how society could move towards goods and services being transferred without any need for money to be exchanged?

In some of the science fiction that I've read (right now I can only think of the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks), the idea of money and the need to use it to get goods or services is looked upon with some disdain; or at least as a marker of a more primitive society/culture.

Are there any books out there that deal with the actual process, the nuts and bolts, of moving from a money-based society to one that operates (successfully) without it?

To be clear, I don't mean moving to a bartering system or similar, but to a functional economy in which goods and services are delivered freely, without any need for anyone to pay for them.

As always, thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

posted by gwpcasey to society & culture (19 comments total)

Isn't this just socialism, with such an abundance of resources that you can have whatever you want?
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:22 PM on June 9

Das Kapital
posted by dfriedman at 2:36 PM on June 9

It's been a few years, but I believe The First Immortal covers pretty much exactly that, with the premise that nanotechnology makes scarcity no longer a relevant economic concept.

Scarcity, of course, being the relevant block to goods and services flowing freely.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom's concept of "Whuffie" may also be of interest, but I don't believe it covers the changeover itself. (Been a few years on that one, too.)
posted by restless_nomad at 2:41 PM on June 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

You might have some luck searching for "post-scarcity economy"; as long as material goods are limited, there will be a need for a distribution and trade mechanism like money.
See the Star Trek Universe - food, clothing, and shelter are free because they can all be made in a replicator; but there are some rare and precious things like dilithium crystals that can't and these still need to be traded for.

Example off the top of my head would be Cory Doctorow's book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which takes place in a post-scarcity economy.
posted by bartleby at 2:46 PM on June 9

The first thing I thought of was the "Sloosha's Crossin'" section of Cloud Atlas.
posted by mattbucher at 2:56 PM on June 9

Accelerando by Charles Stross might be what you're looking for, its about the singularity and what happens after.
posted by hobgadling at 3:07 PM on June 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

Star Trek is more or less this, as I understand it. I believe the idea was once you had dilithium/fusion/warp for energy and replicators, money was obsolete. I don't think it was talked about much in the show though.
posted by chairface at 3:58 PM on June 9

Ursula LeGuin The Dispossessed is exactly what you are looking for. Google search for lots of descriptions of the book.
posted by nax at 4:11 PM on June 9 [2 favorites has favorites]

There's a gift economy in part of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy. It's not fully post-scarcity, but it is a scenario in which peoples' basic needs have become basically too cheap to meter, and luxuries are exchanged on a gift basis.

A lot of the reputation-economy fiction seems to just drop in a new kind of money, without examining in any detail why the reputation-capital behaves differently from typical modern currencies.
posted by hattifattener at 4:29 PM on June 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

'And Then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell.
posted by KenManiac at 5:01 PM on June 9

Seconding Accelerando, The Dispossessed, and RGB Mars.

Three very different, and fairly detailed, descriptions of HOW a post-money society might be organized. Each is a sort of utopia, but with radically different characteristics.

Three of my favorite authors, too.
posted by General Tonic at 5:25 PM on June 9

Voyage from Yesteryear by James P. Hogan has this idea as a central plot point. And it's a pretty good sci-fi book too.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 5:48 PM on June 9

Nancy Kress - Beggars Ride (trilogy of books in one volume) - hard to describe without giving out major spoilers. it's good, and it deals with a post-scarce econ in a unique manner.
posted by nomisxid at 5:50 PM on June 9

Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt: The Solution of the Economic Paradox (book), Emergy and Population in a Natural Economy (html), The Technocracy Study Course (pdf), and The Venus Project (ongoing communal research center), all deal with the progression to thermodynamic economies in which value is established based on the energy bound into (or required to maintain) a system. While not strictly a system free of trade, where everyone gets anything for simply the asking, it is completely devoid of concepts like interest and inflation, because the energy inherent in whatever "thing" is quantifiable and relatively fixed. (Hot water has a higher value than cold, but it depreciates rapidly in air.) Such an economy has the virtue of not relying on pocket cold fusion reactors powering trans-dimensional quantum-tunneling supercomputers controlling grey goo to do our bidding. Said economy has the serious downside of costing an absolute fortune to do anything that does not bind energy... Growing things (binding free sunlight)="Wealth". Anything else (burning energy-dense, gooey dinosaurs)="Waste"... which then lands the rational among us back at the doorstep of purely agrarian socialism, and News from Nowhere, by William Morris without even glancing at the gift economies still surviving on small islands today. (All we have to do now is convince six billion people to become farmers.)
Personally, I'm hoarding dilithium.
posted by EnsignLunchmeat at 6:42 PM on June 9

"'And Then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell."

I was going to suggest the same. Myob!
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 8:00 PM on June 9

I can't say for sure, since despite dating someone obsessed with it, I never actually read up on the subject, but ParEcon might be relevant.
posted by newrambler at 8:19 PM on June 9

Here are a few non-fiction books on gift economies. These are more focused on philosophy, sociology and the history of ideas about gift economies than on practical implementation, but you may find them of interest.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

David Cheal, The Gift Economy

Genevieve Vaughn, For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange (available free online)
Unfortunately, although I am well versed in feminist theory, I found this book nearly unreadable. Its most salient and relevant points are buried under obscure linguistic theories and vague ideas, and the reasoning is all over the map. (And I say this as someone who generally enjoys academic writing, especially by feminists). But if you're willing to wade through it, it does devote some attention to the question of how a gift economy might actually operate.
posted by velvet winter at 10:07 PM on June 9

Thanks to all for the answers. I thought at the beginning that I was just going to get a ton of Das Kapital recommendations.

Dilithium you say... so what am I going to do with all the bottled water I've got stashed in my bomb shelter? (Joking of course, I've got solar-powered micro-desalinating plants in my global-warming-shelter.)
posted by gwpcasey at 10:52 AM on June 10

Well, this isn't a book and it's about a monetary system, so not quite what you were asking, but all I could think of was Ripple. Basically an open source, decentralised form of currency.
posted by greytape at 11:37 AM on June 10