Will we ever be without currency?

[FPLOON]

Unless we gain the ability to create matter, we will always need currency.

What if instead of a form of physical currency... it's a form of emotional currency? Or at least a form of intangible currency?

Sure, it may cause a new form of belief that only a selected generation would try to leach onto as well as try to expand it further throughout time, but it can be possible... I guess...

But, yeah, it's still a form of currency... and currency is not going away anytime soon... It might evolve over time, but currency is still currency... unless Webster says otherwise...

 

[Silvanus]

As long as there is money there will be poverty, hell, even without money there will be poverty. People that are less fortunate in life will always be looked at as being the poor. Even in a completely egalitarian society where everyone has exactly the same standard of living there will be poor people, people that simply still get the short end of the stick in life in some way.

Aye, but I was referring to actual economic poverty-- starvation, no access to clean drinking water, nonexistant medicine & education. That shit doesn't need to exist as long as there's money. Hell, it doesn't need to exist to the extent that it does right now.

It'll take a while, and it may never happen, but it's quite possible for it to end.

 

[Syntax Error]

In a Utopia built on absolute trust, then, yes, currency as we know it will become obsolete. In a future where we have truly infinite resources (perpetual energy and food/water supplies and maybe even luxuries), then yes, I can see it happening. The very first step is to abolish the system of haves and have-nots. Since if YOU discovered a source of perpetual energy, won't you jump at the chance to monetize it?

But we all know that is next to impossible. Besides, for all its (literal) worth, the invention of Currency actually changed the course of history, otherwise, your PS4 will probably be worth 4 chickens and a cow. Or 4 cows and a Chicken. Or 3 Pigs. Or..... You get the idea.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

You seem to have a flawed idea of a what a replicator does, there are no external raw materials for a replicator.

I was going to do a long post but this is actually really easy to disprove.

All energy production requires an input of something and then is converted to something else, and energy is outputted. What is the most perfect method of this possible? Where something is inputting, and turned into PURE energy with no byproduct.

As in converted matter to pure energy. And then what does the replicator do? Turns energy into matter. So for your 1 ounce of fuel, you make 1 ounce of replicated identical material(less or more if you make something different, and in actual fact less since the conversion wont be perfect). And here we arrive back at my original point, you need somewhere to get these raw materials or fuel from.

Fuel has to come from somewhere, and you could pump matter fuel of heat and turn it into plasma, etract that THEN convert it to pure energy, but that makes no difference. Fuel is something everyone needs, and someone needs to go get it, and if everyone needs it, they will charge for it.

Likewise blueprints, entertainment, services like repairing and inventing and improving system, all of these things you cant make with a replicator. Someone has to have the knowledge to do them, and they will want something in return, or what motivation will they have to do it.

The one big problem is that replicators are not isolated all creating entities. They require things in order to work, in order to stay repaired, and you wont neccessarily have those things, other people will. And because of that currency will always exist as long as we need other people to achieve things we cannot.

 

[Abomination]

Not possbile, even with infiniate resources because that doesn't mean infinite SERVICES. People's time is valuable and currency is simply an agreed upon method to measure value.

Your time will always be valuable and thus there will always be a need for currency.

 

[babinro]

No.

Even if society completely breaks down we'd resort to a barter system which is still essentially currency. Humanity seems to greedy to every allow a Star Trek style society to become a reality.

The closest I could envision is a form of communism that simply eliminates the economy but doesn't give the individual true freedom. A minimum wage job would allow the individual to access only basic needs while a surgeon would be given a lot more privileges to mimic the societal differences that money creates.

 

[FPLOON]

Unless we gain the ability to create matter, we will always need currency.

What if instead of a form of physical currency... it's a form of emotional currency? Or at least a form of intangible currency?

Sure, it may cause a new form of belief that only a selected generation would try to leach onto as well as try to expand it further throughout time, but it can be possible... I guess...

But, yeah, it's still a form of currency... and currency is not going away anytime soon... It might evolve over time, but currency is still currency... unless Webster says otherwise...

We already have a form of intangible currency, most money in the world is being kept track of (or exists entirely) in digital form, which is intangible.

True... But, that type of intangible currency is still based on the current tangible currency... If bitcoins, for example, do become the universal currency in tune to our current tangible currency, then it will be the first intangible currency to be recognized globally as actual currency... and not just by those that use bitcoins, that is...

 

[wulf3n]

I can only think of two things that would negate the need for currency.

Humanity has a change in ideology similar to the Qun [http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Qun] or I guess the essence of communism. Where an individual thinks only of the whole.

or

The state of A.I. and robotics reaches a point where all action [resource gathering, science, maintenance etc] is performed by machines.

 

[endtherapture]

The very first step is to abolish the system of haves and have-nots. Since if YOU discovered a source of perpetual energy, won't you jump at the chance to monetize it?

If I discovered fusion power...say...tomorrow, I wouldn't want to monetize it. Maybe I am a weird futurist, or I don't care about money, but I'd want to get this infinite energy source there improving peoples lives as soon as I could. I wouldn't want it monetized. Maybe I am mad.

Believe it or not, there is a small percentage of the population who have deep passions in science, mathematics, and engineering, who would be advancing things whether or not they had any incentive (other than to be involved with moving humanity forward, and for the sake of knowledge).

Maybe this thread has just proved most people are self interested arseholes, and that's why we'll always be stuck in an oppressive, money-based class system. Or you just can't think outside the box.

 

[-Ezio-]

dunno about the rest of you but I'm constantly without currency.

 

[direkiller]

Any one could make limitless amounts of anything they want. So nobody would need to acquire anything from each other. No trading = no currency. (Except maybe creative works, but then people wouldn't need to be paid to produce these, because they don't need money ether, so they can just be given away for free)

This a popular way of thinking about it, but its flawed. The raw materials need to come from somewhere, the replicator just turns those materials into what you want by constructing it out of those raw elements.

You need to get them from somewhere, and someone needs to mine/process and refine them. The actual templates for every item also needs to be made somewhere.

And to think that they would just "give" that kind of stuff away is laughable. And on top of that, like I said before, where do you get the replicator from?

You seem to have a flawed idea of a what a replicator does, there are no external raw materials for a replicator.

A replicator directly turns energy into matter (or the other way around) by rearranging atoms (kind of the same way a transporter atomizes a person as an energy pattern and back again), for an example a replicator could turn raw energy (electricity or plasma) into a physical apple, directly. Nothing else required.

The key is you would limitless energy in order to do this at it's maximum potential. In Star Trek they do not actually have limitless energy, they have only as much as the warp core can put out. Which is why they only do limited replicating. Using a sun would be a good idea but even sun's aren't limitless.

replicators in startrek work off of a mass conversion system(it's in the fluff), else they would need the output of a sun to produce a jug of water

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Replicator

 

[Heronblade]

Its not inconceivable that in a society where both materials and their assembly are free (aka do not require human efforts), that the action taken to "keep only for yourself" or "to demand payment" for designs of any kind of goods will be seen as a grave offense to human dignity and social cohesion, and might become a criminal act and punishable under their laws.

In this society you describe, scientists, engineers, and artists would be among the few whose jobs would not be largely eliminated. All three of these categories (usually) involve incredibly difficult and tedious work, the product of which can and often does benefit society immensely.

Speaking as a member of the second category, under the circumstances you describe, why in the hell would I keep busting my ass so the rest of you can simply lounge around using products I designed? I got into this profession in large part because I like the idea of benefiting humanity in the long run. Money beyond comfortable living expenses is not a primary concern. But even for someone who is not motivated by greed, that sentiment can only take one so far.

Most of my peers would abandon the profession entirely. While those that remain are likely to be among our best, I think you will find that even in this Utopian state of affairs, you need as many of us as possible.

well the monetary value system is partly a way of managing resources but as far as near limitless energy goes (a somewhat key resource that's reflected in everythings price) we could have that worked out by *looks at watch* 15 years ?

lookup ITER if you dunno about it already and want to know more.

potentially halfway there in your lifetime ain't that bad.

Don't get too excited about that yet. No fusion reactor has yet been designed that produces more energy than it consumes. The one proposed at ITER appears promising, but has not been proven.

Even if it does work as intended, its a deuterium-tritium reactor, it runs on isotopes of hydrogen that are tough to find on earth. The only significant source of either we can reach is on the moon, and it would take a massive strip mining operation in which we sift large swaths of the moon's surface in order to get enough to cover our power usage for any length of time. Possible, but incredibly difficult and expensive. Among other problems, Lunar Regolith, the dust covering the moon, is an electrostaticly charged mix of jagged particulate. It gets everywhere, sticks to almost anything, and can cause a great deal of damage to both machinery and human lungs.

 

[tofulove]

i look forward to a future where robots can rap for me.