requirement for money-less economy?

Question

what are the requirement for humanity to replace the need for money? quoting some from 24th century earth economy:

1. a lot of energy resource: when anti-matter reactor come into play, humanity able to produce much larger energy than ever required to meet their demand. energy become so cheap that automation come into nearly all means of production and services. making them so cheap that existing government would offer them for free/near free.

2. instant transportation: this technology combine with nearly free unlimited energy provides ultimate  put distribution cost to nearly zero. meaning food/clothing/construction material can be distributed to any part of the world wherever and whenever needed. disparities of life standard will evaporates quickly.

3. advance material replicator: will ultimately saying goodbye to farms, mining facilities and refineries since food and all kind of material required (even some form of fuels) can be synthesized from energy directly, with those abundant energy most of the earth will be transformed back to forest, swamps, savannah and other natural landscape, healing the environment much faster.

4. advance robotics: with these, all task which can be automated (recycling, maintenance, common good production) left humanity to most important things to do: inventing, experimenting, artistic works, consultation services, and expert studies. making life generally a better without the financial pressure: work will be the choice of interest and commitment instead of obligation. 

do you thing this is possible in the next 300-400 years?

Dave B · Accepted Answer

Let's go back to the definition of money for this one.  It is the markers we use for peaceful redistribution of scarce resources.  So, if you invent something that simplifies distribution or otherwise affects scarcity in a way that everyone gets everything they want when they want it, then there is less need to facilitate trade for those things.

Possible in 3 to 4 hundred years?  Doubtful.  The economic system is self reinforcing.  You may not have off the grid money available for that long, i.e. cash.  But even Captain Kirk uses credits.  If life gets better, people have more babies, creating the resource shortage again, and that revives the need for money.  Human nature at work: the meek inherit the earth because they have children.  Lots of them.

And I hope it doesn't happen the other way it could happen - going back to a barter economy.  That happens when needs are very simplified because there are common resources available that everyone needs, like food and shelter, but there's not much of anything everyone wants.  Diamond rings for weddings may as well be on the moon for all that people would be able to get one.  That was the case in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome but before Charlemaigne.  Bombing people into another dark age does not sound like a lot of fun.

Spotty J · Answer

I very much doubt any invention will obviate the need for money. No matter how you think you could make things free or cheap to produce & distribute, there will only be an entirely other group of things that are now scarce and valued resources. With human time and labor being a constant -- why would your future consultants bother to spend their time consulting if they are not going to be paid for it? Automating production only frees up human labor to move up and do higher order work. But it's still work and people need some incentive to allocate their time (hence, money).

Why would you want to get rid of money anyway? It's the smartest thing we've ever invented.

Besides, at least half your list if fantasy anyway. Instant transportation? We know enough about physics to know that's not possible for anything bigger than an electron moving a millionth of a micron. Technology won't change that. There will never be Star Trek teleporters -- not in a billion years, not in THIS universe.

requirement for money-less economy?

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