phasing out political/financial systems

[video version]

Why support movements and initiatives (occupations, for instance) that could lead to the End of Money?

So often it has been assumed that a massive failure or shutdown of the political/financial system would lead to a collapse of civilization - mass starvation, violence, etc.

We can understand why people make that assumption.

But consider whether the opposite might be the case.

What would replace money and laws? Trust, relationships, communication, cooperation. Plenty of organizational methods exist that don't utilize political or financial capital. The political/financial systems have often crowded out, or driven out, alternative systems from various niches. Now we may be able to make a conscious, collective choice to retire the systems that evolved in an environment of harshness and mistrust, in favor of the abundantly available alternatives.

Let's remember that receiving or having money, by definition, confers no utility, creates no value, until you exchange the money for something from someone else who has agreed to use this medium. All of the utility of money derives from this agreement among us. We can collectively re-examine this agreement and possibly change or discard it. If we decide to discard it, this could save us a lot of time and energy, considering how pervasive and complex our interactions with money have become.

We've developed complex rules / expectations about when, under what circumstances, money is exchanged. Those rules and expectations are woven into our systems of distributing goods and performing services, but are they an integral part of those systems? I don't think so. In situation after situation, I think we could describe how each particular value-creating activity could proceed more effectively without money. There will be a certain amount of retooling, rethinking, reprogramming involved in this transition, surely. There will be radical reorganizations of many kinds.

I imagine there might be much more to be said about this. I'm interested in your take.