Can a human society function to a reasonable standard without some manner of currency?

I don’t believe so. Greed will always get in the way. If we lived only for our needs then perhaps, but “wants” will overpower any obtained balance such as trading services with each other.

It depends on what you substitute for “currency”. If you maintain a standard of exchange of credits (money) for services that makes sense, such as “units earned/spent” on a balance scale of some sort, then yes. I think the debit/credit card qualifies as a suitable way to keep track.

Many people, as in our family, never see currency from pay check (plus side) to paying the bills/buying groceries (minus side), unless we go out of our way to ask for it.

That’s an interesting thought. It’s pure speculation of course atm, but I think it will happen sooner or later. In a couple of hundred years I don’t think we will have money. If a society has the resources and ability to provide it’s population with whatever they need whenever they need it, currency will cease to have value. It’s a basic market law. I want to have a pair of pants with flowers on it, I download the specs and print it out in my 3D printer. It’s likely that we will have no jobs, but we will have areas of expertise. Yes, it’s very much a communist idea. Sue me.

People survived for 10000’s of years before the idea of currency was introduced.
In our current day society, no it is not possible because we’re indentured to the idea of currency. To make currency worthless is to completely change our society.

If scarcity could be eliminated then it would be possible—I think it could only happen in an intergalactic civilisation with, in essence, unlimited resources.

Thus far every comment appears to be based upon the assumption that ‘currency’ solely refers to money.

@NiallyBob i’m going to have to ask you to elaborate ok your question then.

@Nially_Bob I didn’t. I specifically explained what I meant, and added currency in case you meant cash money.

@heretic in the past objects like gold or livestock acted as a form of currency. I have no way to validate this claim, but I assume for as long as human kind has existed there has been ownership, value, and trade.

I do not think we could reasonably live without some neutral unit that had an implied value, be it a real value such as gold or a synthetic value such as the dollar. the reason I think this is I do not believe humans could rationally negotiate fair trade of goods and services without currency.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic The most simple means by which I could elaborate is by stating that I would define currency as a ‘medium of exchange’. In this sense currency could be items and, depending upon how speculative one is, perhaps services.
I hope this has offered you some insight my compassionate friend and I welcome you to contend what I have said if you feel so inclined.
@Yarnlady My apologies. As I mentioned in my comment, it appeared so, but upon more thoroughly studying your comment I can appreciate your position on the matter and understand that you were not specifically referring to money.

Assuming that currency does not solely refer to money. I would say there has always been an exchange of goods. Called Trade. Indigenous peoples used trade before colonization. And that was the currency, trade of goods. And I would say trade does need to exist.

I always wondered the purpose of money/currency, and whether it really had to exist. It seemed that as human cultures developed, we came to carry out more and more inequitable transactions, such that X number of sheep could not be equated in value to a pound of coffee, because the value of coffee, a new and unknown commodity, was not understood. So, trading came to take place more through the medium of gold and other metals, which I believe is how modern currencies came into existence.

And so, today, could we manage without a currency, with the plenitude of purchases and exchanges of different items we make on a daily basis? I doubt it, or at least, I don’t see a way that it could work.

If you have no incentive for trade, you have no basis for currency.

I’m familiar with the concept of currency.

As for currency humans established that concept the moment we became hunter/gatherers and so far has proven to be a one way trip

Money is a metaphor for value. It doesn’t require a physical form. It’s just an easy way to keep track of who owes who what. You could do it based on a person’s word, or using shells, gold, paper, electrons. It really doesn’t matter. I largely live without cash. My pay is wired directly to my bank. My bills are paid automatically. I use credit cards wherever I can. For me, largely, I don’t think about currency. It’s just an idea.

I mean, in this recession, we lost a lot of money—on paper. But we never planned to spend that money for decades, so it wasn’t real in the first place. Our losses are just as unreal. The thing that is really scary is the prospect of unemployment.

I personally don’t see how it would be possible. We are far too diverse and inherently selfish.

Any exchange of goods assumes a basis of value. Unless everything were just compiled into a central location and then people took what they felt they needed there would be no way to function without currency of some sort.

@daloon Currency may be “just an idea”, but see how well you can get paid and pay your bills in shells!

@jo_with_no_space If we all used shells, I’d have no problem. Currency is an agreement. Shells work just as well as paper as a concept. Of course, paper is easier to carry than shells. But electrons are easier than paper. When everything is credit cards and online sales, currency will be a completely abstract idea. It is already, but people don’t yet realize it.

@daloon – I agree, credit cards are already the global currency that is accepted most places and removes the hassle of conversion.

I like the idea of barter, and it has its special place in society. I think that if it were used more, a lot of people would benefit from it, not only in the “monetary” sense, but also from the good will and feeling it brings. Of course, if you are an electrician and fix your friend’s wall socket, and he helps you with your computer, this won’t buy you groceries to feed your kids. But I’m talking more along the lines of if you help my kids with math once a week, I’ll give your kids piano lessons.

We can’t go back to commune times. And it doesn’t matter what is printed on the bill, or what the credit card represents. But combining the two, barter and currency, can bring a lot of satisfaction – and save on some bills, too.

:-)

@Zen: Isn’t this already what we do? Not everyone barters, but a lot of people do.

@daloon Of curse it exists, just not enough imho. Thought I’d bring it up, is all.

@Zen apparently you don’t consider exchanging time and goods (bartering)as ‘currency’, but I do. No exchange of ‘currency’ would mean people would make things because they enjoy it, such as raising food, making clothes, building buildings, and then other people would simply take the goods whenever they wanted to, with no barter, or exchange of any kind.

You are simply calling currency by a different name (bartering).

@Yarnlady Sorry, dear, I must disagree. In this “utopian” society, where currency doesn’t exist, and bartering is currency, you imply that one has to be able to grow their own vegetables, sew their own clothes and build their own homes. Not everyone is capable of doing everything, which is where barter comes in. People exchange their knowledge with each other.

Currency is merely using some form of paper or plastic as an IOU. Somebody will have to pay at some point. Now that doesn’t always work out, eh? Hence Madoff. Hence the current economic climate.

I disagree with you, and do not think barter = currency at all. I am curious to hear other thoughts on this.

@Zen I request a more careful reading of what I actually said, and you will see that I did not imply any such thing.

Currency is a unit of exchange.

The question is really whether or not you are assigning value to your vegetables or clothes.
For example, would you provide the same amount of vegetables to someone for a sock as you would for a winter coat?

Once you assign value, you are determining a unit of exchange, hence a currency. Even if it is nebulous, as long as it is a relative value, you still have currency.

Another way to think of currency is as crystallized, condensed human labor. I wish more people thought of it that way.

That’s why, when people say “It’s only money,” it irks me a little bit. It’s only X number of hours of my crystallized lifespan. That gives it a different meaning, at least to me.

Also, I realize I’m late to the party, but I’d like to make another point. Up there ^^, @jamms said, “be it a real value such as gold or a synthetic value such as the dollar.” The thing is, they’re both “synthetic value.” Gold might have a tradition of being valuable, but that doesn’t mean it’s intrinsically so: it is still only worth what people are willing to trade for it.

@laureth I’m with you on this, and I think you have helped to clarify what I meant. I haven’t assigned a monetary value on my “clothes making skills” versus your “organic garden,” I simply said that a person requires both, and that I can provide only one, say.

I’ll teach your kids what I am good at and you’ll help mine. Here are some fresh vegetables from my garden, thanks for the coat.

I didn’t say how much it costs.

@Zen I hardly ever look at the person I answer, so it’s not just you you might not assign a value (currency) to the exchange, yet one person might just as well say, I spent hours on the coat and it goes to the guy who spent hours shearing the sheep and weaving the fabric to make it. If you want one, make my work easier. that is the currency I require.

@Yarnlady And that was the invent of money right there.