Can We Live Without Money?
Money is seen by many people to be as essential as gravity, energy, or light. We assume that money has a common understanding across human cultures throughout history.
Many people love money but some people see it as the root of all evil. Money has over time become our technology of exchange in human civilisations. Money allows people to get what they want quickly and easily.
Origins of Money
Before money existed individuals bartered to get what they wanted. People might starve before they were able to find the right person with whom to barter. This was found to be so inconvenient that people invented money. From then on civilisation took off.
Money was invented to cater for the needs of the marketplace. Money is created by governments or states. Money functions to store and exchange imaginary value through the magic of accounting. Money allowed people to exchange goods and services, obtain credit, and settle debts.
Money suddenly appears in human history when our ancestors first met in the marketplaces of early civilisations millennia ago. These include Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. These cultures agreed on a currency of exchange to speed up and simplify transactions. This currency became money and banks soon followed.
Money is a System of Exchange
Money is a system of exchange. Exchange is a property of life and of the universe as well. The life of any organism is understood through its relationships of exchange with other organisms. If there is no exchange of any kind there is no relationship.
Money cannot be understood without understanding it as a form of exchange. There is no history of money separate from the history of exchange. Money is a consequence of exchange.
We normally think of exchange as two people trading two goods. In reality, all transactions involve three parties. These are a seller, a buyer, and a bank. There is only one commodity that is exchanged. This is in return for the bank’s promise to pay to be transferred from the buyer to the seller.
What is Money?
Professor Augusto Graziani questioned what the difference between money and barter is. He discovered that an economy using gold for trade is really a barter economy. Then he set three basic conditions that needed to be met for money:
1. Money has to be a token currency. Otherwise, it would give rise to barter and not to monetary exchanges.
2. Money has to be accepted as a means of final settlement of the transaction. Otherwise, it would be credit and not money.
3. Money must not grant privileges of seniority to any agent making a payment.
Graziani deduced that only payments made by means of promises of a third agent will satisfy these three conditions. The typical third agent is today known as a bank.
Money is the promise of a bank to its customer. A payment is the transfer of that promise from one customer to another. Today our coins and notes we use have very little intrinsic value. Their value comes from trusting the banks that honour the promises of payment we make.
How money is used on Earth
Banks create money by issuing a loan to a borrower. They record the loan as an asset and the money they deposit in the borrower’s account as a liability.
Money is a third party’s promise to pay as full payment in exchange for goods. The two main third parties whose promises we accept are the government and the banks.
Money has no intrinsic physical value or worth. Money is not backed by anything physical and instead relies on trust. This trust can be abused by banks or governments and when this happens problems arise.
Money serves to facilitate the exchange of value. If you want bread and you have eggs you can trade your eggs for bread. However, you wouldn’t be able to exchange anything that no one wants unless you both use a common currency. That is the power and simplicity of money. Money allows trading of anything between anyone as long as there is demand and supply of goods and services, and also enough money for the exchange.
Your mobile phone exists because many people have put their efforts together. They gathered components and resources from across several continents. Through a highly efficient network of cooperation, all this technology and expertise were brought together to create your phone. This would very difficult to achieve in today’s world without money as a facilitator for exchange.
Digital Money & Cryptocurrencies
Money exists in many intangible forms today in addition to paper money and coins. We have electronic money in bank accounts that is all 1’s and 0’s on computers. This is information that is encrypted and stored on mainframe computers across the world. It is transferred through the cloud from bank to bank.
Cryptocurrencies including bitcoin are based on trusting no one. They use encryption and decryption techniques across the cloud without using a bank. It is easy to purchase some bitcoin and buy online without detection, perhaps illegally on the ‘dark web’, and exchange the bitcoin with the seller to obtain the goods. Complicated mathematical processing is used to generate bitcoin and also to encrypt/decrypt block-chain information.
Overcoming Human Nature
Money is merely a tool or technology we use for exchange. It is the people who are greedy and have little control over their desires that create all the issues. Greed and control existed before we developed money.
Human beings have used their desire for money to forget about their humanity. The sufferings of those who do not have money are neglected by the people who have money.
Money is the symptom, not the cause, of the disease of concentration of power. If you take money away, the powerful will still oppress the powerless, probably by nastier methods such as big men with guns.
Is Money Used on Other Worlds?
Most advanced worlds have no need for money including the avian planets and Andromeda. In Andromeda, there is no money and no technology and your needs are taken care of. Everyone trusts each other. They live in a shared culture of light and love. Over there, most souls are heart-based and they do not use money.
On Orion, they have a science of liquid money that is the core of the prosperity of their empire. On their worlds, money is viewed like water in an ecosystem, or as the flow of light through the cosmos. When the flow is pure and healthy like water from a stream then the economy is healthy. Liquid light and light codes are created through advanced technologies that heal any blocks to the flow of money.
Living without Money
Without money, modern economies on the Earth could not function. Before we can transcend money we must address the reality of life and humanity on earth. We need to overcome our greed and trust each other before we can live in a world with free exchange.
If we dropped money altogether we would be reduced to a barter economy. Human civilisation would soon collapse into chaos driven by greed, control, and inequality.
We can live without money if we live in sustainable communities across the planet and exchanged goods and services freely. This only works out of love and integrity with an emphasis on the common good of all. This is actualised through helping and serving others and the planet.
The need for money is transcended on other worlds. This is achieved by fostering a freely flowing global society whilst embracing equality and diversity. We can do the same on Earth.
We can only let go of money when our society becomes one based on love and not fear. This is when we have evolved beyond the need to control things, or have power over others, hoard things or feel more important than others. A society without money is one of equality and diversity, a brave new world that embraces the best of humanity whilst letting go of the worst of humanity.