American greed and how it hurts the 99%

I’m not an economist, and this is just my opinion on the state of the US and my thoughts on how to fix it.

In Part 2 of this series, I gave some ideas on how we can fix our economy. In this part I’ll go to an extreme and ask the question “can we get rid of money all together?” and I say yes. Maybe not any time soon but I think in time we can go moneyless.

I call it the Star Trek economy. In the Star Trek shows and movies Gene Roddenberry showed a time that worked without money. People worked to better themselves and their society and I think that can work in reality. Money just seems to cause trouble. The wealthy want more, the poor just want it, and both poor and wealthy people steal and commit even more heinous crimes for money. The most logical thing to do is just get rid of it right? But how do we start doing this?

Well, first off we need enough people open to it, and that’s why I think it’ll take a while. Right now most people in Government, and most wealthy people would probably be against going moneyless. Why though? My thought is money is power in legal and not legal ways. Most of these ways whether legal or not are from the ego. To some wealthy people it must be a rush to know you have people’s livelihoods in their hand’s, to have people look up to them because of the money they have. To give up that power would probably be very hard for most wealthy people.

With my idea though the rich person would still be rich, but with just things like houses, cars, planes, boats, jewels…etc. On the flip side people who were poor that worked would get everything they needed and some things they wanted. No money would mean we wouldn’t need banks, or clickbait advertising, we wouldn’t need insurance and crime would go down. Crime wouldn’t go away altogether though; people would probably still steal stuff they wanted but couldn’t have. In some instances, we may even go back to bartering, I’ll do this service for you if you give me (enter object here), but if you work, you’ll get a safe place to live, utilities, transportation (car or the ability to use rides share services or public transportation for free), internet, computer, television, if you want you can get a game console, the ability to travel, get healthy food and more.

Getting rid of money would probably also expand creativity and bring new inventions quicker. Right now, companies take things in slow jumps, for instance technology. A cell phone manufacturer for instance may hold back screen technology so they can bring out better screens in increments hence in the long run making more money selling a phone that’s just a little better than the one last year. Get rid of currency and companies could roll-out the best of the best quickly. Also, no worry about R&D, companies could have as many engineers work on anything they want which would make new tech come out quicker. Also, a person who has an idea but doesn’t have the money to implement it without a loan can do so. You don’t want to work for anyone, start your own company without the worry of funding.

Another positive is houses and buildings can be fixed or rebuilt which would make for more housing, offices and jobs.

So how do I see this starting out? I’m thinking it wouldn’t be easy, you can just go from a country that uses currency to one that doesn’t overnight. New laws would have to be made, new technology for businesses, new rules for employees among other things that would have to change.

Stores and restaurants would have to change. Maybe things would be color coded depending on job title? A CEO would be able to buy things that are “more valuable” than a regular blue-collar worker.

When these things are done though, living without money could look like this.

Like I said earlier people who work get everything they need to live (housing, utilities, transportation…etc). They would just have to go to work and do the job they were hired to do, just like they do now. The hours of work can be less for popular jobs so people wouldn’t have to work as much. Instead of an 8–10-hour day, maybe a 4–6-hour day, if they want, they can work more or even go to another job, or they can spend more time with family and friends.

There would have to be housing that people could choose from. Buildings would have to be inspected and maintained.

If you want a car, you wouldn’t be able to buy a Lamborghini, or even a Tesla Model S, but maybe you can get something in the line of a Model 3 or a Toyota Camry.

If you do work over time, or take someone else's shift you can maybe get some kind of benefit from that. Maybe the ability to buy something more expensive or save them for something you really want like a nicer car?

As a person gets promoted, they get more. For instance, maybe a bigger apartment or house, nicer cars to choose from for example.

Same if you make your own company, as it does better, you get more and better choices.

All of the choices you get coincide with the choices a person would have compared to the amount of money they would make at the job they’re doing.

How would we deal with other countries? I was thinking companies could still use money to deal with other countries. They can buy and sell goods for money so unless we can get every country in the world to give up currency companies would still have to use it.

Another option would be to start making more things in the US and trading with other countries. For instance, if a computer company wants us to build their computers for free, we’d have to get them for free ourselves. Or we build them and charge them and we buy what we need from them. The whole idea is the American people don’t have to use money to get what they need, if American companies still have to use money for outside business, then we could make that work.

Maybe some countries would follow? I can see Canada joining, maybe the EU or UK? Some countries of course wouldn’t because their dictators wouldn’t want to lose the power they have over their people.

This isn’t fully getting rid of currency, but instead of using money which is the “middle man” we’re going straight to just getting what we need for the work we do. Businesses not having to pay people would make things simpler. Money causes to many problems, so we either need to figure out how to fix the issue or get rid of it.