Sep 11 2012: BTW, there is some interesting science fiction about "post-scarcity" worlds. I recommend the following two:
Midas World by Fredrick Pohl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
and
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky - this one talks about what happens when a rigid, controlling society is exposed to an "invasion" of a society with nearly infinite productive capability called "The Festival"
Sep 11 2012: Thank you for starting this conversation. Its interesting.
I think we need to have some agreement about the purpose of money. To my mind, the purpose of money is that it allocates the products of human and machine labor to various peoples. Whether you like money or hate it, or think its fair or unfair, I think that we can generally agree that it currently does this.
You are positing that essentially technology will eventually become so productive that there will be no limits, and therefore no need to decide who gets what because everyone will be able to have everything that they want.
But there isn't a limit on human need (and there are still many fixed resources - land, water, air, energy, etc.), so I don't see money becoming obsolete in the sense of it providing a way to distribute goods and services. What an entirely automated society does obsolete is the fact that money can be earned through some sort of labor. We are positing now a future where there are thinking machines that can do creative/informational/research labor as well as producing all physical goods.
In such a society, no one can make any claims to more resources than anyone else, because everyone is equally (non) productive. At least that the reasoning for inequality in a capitalist system. One fair system is for everyone to receive the same stipend - a completely egalitarian society. Another idea is to distribute money based on some other system, like moral worth (niceness = cash?) or some amorphous concept of "need". But this really begs the question of who or what decides these other criterion.
Anyway, I feel to advance the conversation, its not so much about the death of money as it is about the death of work and the death of money from work.
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A comment on Conversation: Is There a Future for Money?
Midas World by Fredrick Pohl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World
and
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky - this one talks about what happens when a rigid, controlling society is exposed to an "invasion" of a society with nearly infinite productive capability called "The Festival"
A comment on Conversation: Is There a Future for Money?
I think we need to have some agreement about the purpose of money. To my mind, the purpose of money is that it allocates the products of human and machine labor to various peoples. Whether you like money or hate it, or think its fair or unfair, I think that we can generally agree that it currently does this.
You are positing that essentially technology will eventually become so productive that there will be no limits, and therefore no need to decide who gets what because everyone will be able to have everything that they want.
But there isn't a limit on human need (and there are still many fixed resources - land, water, air, energy, etc.), so I don't see money becoming obsolete in the sense of it providing a way to distribute goods and services. What an entirely automated society does obsolete is the fact that money can be earned through some sort of labor. We are positing now a future where there are thinking machines that can do creative/informational/research labor as well as producing all physical goods.
In such a society, no one can make any claims to more resources than anyone else, because everyone is equally (non) productive. At least that the reasoning for inequality in a capitalist system. One fair system is for everyone to receive the same stipend - a completely egalitarian society. Another idea is to distribute money based on some other system, like moral worth (niceness = cash?) or some amorphous concept of "need". But this really begs the question of who or what decides these other criterion.
Anyway, I feel to advance the conversation, its not so much about the death of money as it is about the death of work and the death of money from work.