Will we ever be without currency?

[Angelous Wang]

My friend and I were having a debate earlier about whether the human race will ever lose the need for currency due to hypothetical scientific advancements?

I argued that with enough scientific and technological developments we might develop a Star Trek-like society where people do things because it's what they love, and there will be no need for currency when science advances to a certain level because we might have robots to the menial rap jobs, wihilst people just go into fields for jobs because it's what they love, and due to infinite resources and technology, there will be no need for currency (obviously highly hypothetical, but this is a hypothetical argument).

However he said that no matter how far science goes, replicators, infinite crops and energy, advanced robots etc. there will always be currency and we will always be a capitalist society.

What is your opinion (be srs pls)

If we get to state where we can produce limitless energy and energy to matter conversion. (plus robotic/nanotech assembly) Then money would become pointless and obsolete.

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)

Currency is an intermediate (middle man) tool to trade what you "have" for what you "want", without have to trading to trade directly with multiple people.

However if you ask me if we will ever get there, probably not, the planet will be dead or will have killed us to save itself long before then (restorative ice age).

 

[Bluestorm83]

We will never reach the Star Trek state where people do work because they love it. Frankly, Star Trek is 100% ridiculous in this respect. Think about it. You can get whatever you want without paying for it because there is such an abundance of everything. So you can put in an order for a free Replicator. Any food you want, whenever you want. Free Doctors to beam the fat out of you whenever you want them to. Oh, and the "Holodeck," AKA the Free Sex With Whoever You Want Machine.

If the entire human race were dropped into Star Trek, there would never be a "Next Generation" because all of the men in the world would die after a 80 year marathon session of bacon cheeseburgers, fat removal transporter surgery, and fantasy orgies.

And that's why we need to shore up the value of the U.S. dollar. The fate of humanity is at stake.

 

[Mossberg Shotty]

No, we're always going to have some form of currency. Maybe you have more faith in the human race than I do, but I don't believe for a second that the vast majority of people would pursue a challenging career just for the challenge/betterment of mankind. The terrible truth is that people get up and go to work every morning because they have to for survival. If that stopped being true, the whole system would collapse. (More than it already has, I mean.)

Currency has always been an abstract thing, and the fact that my country uses fiat money terrifies me, but money is a necessary evil.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

-snip-

Replicators if they did exist would need 3 main things, power, the raw materials and the specifications for items that want to create.

Power could only be made through the replicator(via solar panels or soemthing like that) if you already had power and the other two.

Raw materials need to be mined, purified, and transported, all which require resources, which nobody is going to give you for free. Specifications for things also require time and effort to make, since the objects will need to be built by other means first, then analyzed.

And on top of this, where are you going to get the replicator without money? Are we just expecting the government to hand them out for free? Nu-uh, money is necessary and will forever be necessary.

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?

 

[SerBrittanicus]

Well economics is certainly going to have to undergo a major change in the near future with the ever decreasing job pool due to ever increasing automisation and the possible widespread use of 3d printing. Whether that means currency will be abandoned i dont know, but i dont think it ever will be. Removing currency would remove the motivation to do anything, so unless we have invented a real ai of some kind that can be our doctors and whatnot without complaining i cant see us eliminating it. The western financial system is still teetering on the edge of total collapse, so perhaps when all our currencies become worthless we will at least be able to experience some measure of no currency.

 

[SerBrittanicus]

Well economics is certainly going to have to undergo a major change in the near future with the ever decreasing job pool due to ever increasing automisation and the possible widespread use of 3d printing. Whether that means currency will be abandoned i dont know, but i dont think it ever will be. Removing currency would remove the motivation to do anything, so unless we have invented a real ai of some kind that can be our doctors and whatnot without complaining i cant see us eliminating it. The western financial system is still teetering on the edge of total collapse, so perhaps when all our currencies become worthless we will at least be able to experience some measure of no currency.

 

[SpAc3man]

Currency is always needed. Let's imagine it was eliminated. People would then be trading their own goods and services for other people's goods and services. Some people would procure lots of goods in order to always be able to get whatever goods or services they require. Eventually people will decide on some commodity that is the base value for trading. Something worth a lot for its weight will be the most sensible. People will possibly collect a lot of this commodity and need somewhere to store it. We will then establish a base commodity bank where everyone can keep their base commodities and a record of how much they have. People will then exchange a note of some description that will entitle the holder to a certain number of those commodities from the bank. Shit why bother with notes? This is the future. Why not some futuristic electronic commodity exchange thingy that everyone can have.

Shit. Looks like we have gone and reinvented currency and the modern banking system.

 

[Miyenne]

Nope, because otherwise everyone would have to be considered equal. And that will never happen.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

We will always need some form of portable value. What form the portable value takes is dependent on the technology and circumstances of the civilization; gold and silver are shiny, rare, hard to counterfeit and resistant to corrosion. In the future, we may conduct business with more abstract things, like intellectual rights, or blueprints (operating under the assumption that everyone will have a 3D printer and thus render mass production of commercial goods obsolete).

 

[Phrozenflame500]

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

 

[Albino Boo]

But what replicators and infinite space, what are you going to buy with the currency you've got for your spaceship when everything is on tap and currency is worth nothing? Surely you're designing spaceships for fun at this point? I certainly would, as some people see science as a calling instead of something other than simply making money.

Sacristy is not limited physical things. A concert or sporting event has a limited number of people that can physically attend. To use starships, to go from star system A to star system B requires a ship with limited space. If there are more people wanting to travel than there is space you get sacristy. You can mass produce pictures of the Mona Lisa but there will still be only one original. All the other economic systems have a small group that allocates resources and inevitably they always make the decision allocates resources to themselves.

 

[Angelous Wang]

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.

The "tempalates" are nothing more than a atomic computer blueprint. Plus with something like the internet it would make it easy to find any blueprint you wanted.

"And to think that they would just "give" that kind of stuff away is laughable."

In our world yes, because everyone is out for themselves or their families to survive. However once you have something like a replicator that guarantees your survival that guarantees you will always have all you want/need. Then attitudes will change dramatically. Because they don't ever need, need drives aggression and selfishness of our current life styles.

"where do you get the replicator from?"

The government or your parents probably, they can just create you a new replicator with their replicator.

 

[RandV80]

If we ever get that far technological-wise then it's certainly going to be a struggle. Think about it for a minute, things like the infamous Napster and all the subsequent file sharing programs are essentially Star Trek: TNG replicators for digital media. And despite how cool the technology is look at how well that's gone down in our capitalist society.

And for physical objects you see on Star Trek, like say Tea, don't forget that all these consumer groups are owned under 2 or 3 massive big umbrella corporations. They're going to kick up the same fuss that the media industry did if all of a sudden people can get what they want easily for free. They'll brand their tea flavour under some sort of copyright and make sure the person using this technology is paying. And while they're at it since the government is basically already in their pocket may as well stack the deck for themselves so they can earn even more profit, as after all that's what corporations are intended to do.

So really it comes down to if you want to take an optimistic or pessimistic view of our future.

 

[KOMega]

Sure there will be a day where there is no currency.

Unfortunately, it is also the day after the really really big rock hit our planet.
Or the day when the nearest star (our sun) has exploded and we failed to go somewhere else.
Or the day when an intergalactic horror decides our home looks good topped off with whipped cream and cherries.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that as long as there are people who want to trade with one another, that can't be done with direct trading, then we need currency.


Even if we do reach a point where material objects and resources are infinite, it just means skill and knowledge is suddenly so very much more valuable and we'll probably need to pay for that somehow.

As generous as some people can be, I doubt anyone will give their life's work away for nothing.

 

[lacktheknack]

No. And why would we want to be?

As long as we're going to be trading goods, we'll have a barter system, and currency is the middleman that allows for more precise bartering. Besides, who doesn't love getting money?

 

[___________________]

We don't need money right now. But people don't think about the well being of everyone else. They only care about themselves and so they think they need over-complicated things like the ones you described for a society like that to work. We have all we need to live without money. Except for banks, nothing you have now would disappear. Some minor things would change in how they worked and some people might switch jobs because they wouldn't get money. So if they were motivated by money alone to do a job then they would change.

All you'd need would be rules. A very well structured society doesn't need over the top crap to make the concept work. And people's attitudes needed to change. People needed to start thinking like this "ok, I like this kind of job, but society is lacking people working in that other kind of job and I have the skill set to do it, so I will do that instead for the sake of humanity's comfort and well being". Values like those are lost today. But that's pretty much all you'd need. Everyone working for everyone's sake. Humanity would thrive like never before. Rules and attitudes.

 

[Caiphus]

We don't need money right now. But people don't think about the well being of everyone else. They only care about themselves and so they think they need over-complicated things like the ones you described for a society like that to work. We have all we need to live without money. Except for banks, nothing you have now would disappear. Some minor things would change in how they worked and some people might switch jobs because they wouldn't get money. So if they were motivated by money alone to do a job then they would change.

All you'd need would be rules. A very well structured society doesn't need over the top crap to make the concept work. And people's attitudes needed to change. People needed to start thinking like this "ok, I like this kind of job, but society is lacking people working in that other kind of job and I have the skill set to do it, so I will do that instead for the sake of humanity's comfort and well being". Values like those are lost today. But that's pretty much all you'd need. Everyone working for everyone's sake. Humanity would thrive like never before. Rules and attitudes.

I'd just like to point out that, as an economics student, your post, while wildly idealistic, would never work. Communism without currency would work even less well than Communism with currency. I.e. it wouldn't work.

 

[Silvanus]

I imagine we'll always have currency in some form (though I could see us getting rid of coins and notes, and simply having "credit", maybe with chips in our hands and universal readers all over the place).


I can imagine us doing away with poverty, perhaps in several thousand years' time, and perhaps even drastically changing the way we think about currency (maybe it won't be earned anymore? Maybe goodwill will become the currency of the future? Who knows?)