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Mats Kaarbö

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Is There a Future for Money?

In our digital age, where banks and even nations fail through reckless monetary spending and policies, it seems that our monetary system is becoming the big elephant in the room, yes even obsolete. Automation replacing humans seems to be one of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism and may be the demise of the system itself leaving the looming possibility of fascism or military dictatorship to arise and flourish if we fail to arrive at any alternatives.

While some believe taking us back to the gold standard will fix things, and others believe that debt forgiveness is the solution, we hear talks about access/resource based economies, where we simply declare all of Earth's resources as the common heritage of mankind and make goods and services available to all without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude, through technological abundance.

In fact, let's rephrase the question. At what point in the future do you think that our technology will make automated systems possible and allow us to move out of a monetary system?

Topics: cultural evolution education future future technology government money science social change society technology
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  • John Smith 30+

    • 0
    Sep 14 2012: "Is There a Future for Money?"

    No, at least not any future I would want to live in, so not money as we know it at least, but some kind of accounting currency may prove necessary (even in Star Trek some things are rationed because there just isn't enough energy around for everyone to indulge in everything).
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      Krisztián Pintér 200+

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      TED Translator
      Sep 14 2012: "but some kind of accounting currency may prove necessary"

      and how is that not money? what is money in your book?

      • John Smith 30+

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        Sep 14 2012: Money is transferable: when I buy a plate of food in a restaurant the restaurant owner gets my money and can choose to invest it or gamble it away on the stock market, etc... Another form of currency would see a deduction of the figure from my "account" when I order a plate of food at the restaurant, the restaurant owner doesn't get anything from me (the figure on his account may be increased by some authority periodically for example) and the only purpose of the deduction from my account was to let some authority know that a certain amount of resources has been used and to limit the amount of resources I can use in a year.

        @Jon Ho
        Non-transferable money allows for private property and different levels of compensation, so it doesn't imply communism.

        • Jon Ho

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          Sep 17 2012: Hmmm, it sounds a lot like communism....

        • Danylo Vashchilenko

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          Sep 17 2012: @Jon, Communism is "no private property", not "no private money as a legal tender".

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