the monopoly on money is still one of the major tools of state/capitalistic governance. more then anything else it forces us to interact with the issuers of that money under the terms this issuers define. even though we developed ways to merely survive without (much) money (squats for living, collective kitchens and dumbstered food), everything beyond that still costs, and is payed in official money. be it transportation (there is no means of transportation that does not include payment besides walking and cycling), cultural happenings, connection to internet or simply booze. so it is easy for the state/capitalistic system to keep us in the process of producing and consuming in a way that is governed and controlled by them. through using their money we give away the possibility to define what is work, and how much this work is worth. even though there is a huge sector of work being done without any money, be it for public, semi-public or private spaces, where the only form of payment is respect, gratefulness and self-contentment in the best case. and even though that are huge motivations to do stuff, you still can not buy a beer with it.
to make this reality obsolete we have to built a system that will work better then the current one, only than more and more people will switch and the power of the state/capitalism will eventually fade away.
what we have to think about is how such a system can work, if we can do everything on a free basis, or we need to develop our own kind of payment methods? how we make that system as beneficiary as possible for people and businesses to adopt, and how we can defend this system against state/capitalistic attacks and infiltrations.
Some homework to do, more pointers very welcome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freigeld
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freigeld (in German)
http://www.newciv.org/ncn/moneyteam.html
http://www.unpac.ca/economy/altmoney.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money-free_economy
http://www.altruists.org/ideas/economics/altruistic/
One Comment
Not directly connected, yet, http://www.pledgebank.com/ is, IMHO, a nicely implemented concept of collaboratively getting things done possibly w/o monetary incentives.