this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Without money, money is reinvented. For practicality reasons you want a fungible means of exchange that also lasts. Being small, portable, and not spoiling is also desirable.
That means precious metals or vouchers for something. If you standardize these, you end up with money again.
Without a standardized currency, you end up with a bunch of parallel currencies. That means there will be businesses, who only deal with exchanging one form of currency for another. They could even give out their own vouchers.
Now, the state also wants to collect taxes. Collecting a bunch of different vouchers and coins is a headache. So the state issues their own vouchers, which you have to use to pay taxes. Then we are back where we started.
An interesting approach to money would be, if money had an expiration date. So you have to spend it, or lose it. That keeps it in circulation, leading to more economic activity. Inflation serves this purpose as well.
That'd just lead into investment into non-monetary things. For example, buying precious metals or bonds or stocks or property and selling them as needed.
To actually fix problems with wealth disparity, you need a wealth or property tax.