There are practical reasons that getting rid of currency - or money I assume you mean - is a bad idea. It would be much more difficult to exchange goods and services if we had to barter for instance. But perhaps you have some alternative in mind that I haven't thought of.
I do believe that there are some solutions that we could (and will) come up with, but they do require radical shift of priorities in people's lives. Currently our society is just blinded by "chase money by all means" which was always a part of the humanity, but definitely got worse since Commercial Revolution, then even pushed further by Industrial Revolution. At the same time I feel like the pushback is finally slowly showing up in many parts of the society.
I wholeheartedly agree that we definitely do need some vehicle of value, and it might as well be currencies as we know them now, but with some hoarding-prevention mechanisms built in, or maybe some other way to figure out a value of time you provide to the society. Right now we rely on free market for that, but is the coffee you buy in the morning of same value to you as it is to the person in the queue after you? And if that coffee helps you build more value to society than your fellow man for whatever the reason, maybe part of that difference could also be captured by the coffee producer as well. If price of coffee was expressed in something like a fractional unit of your value in a day, let's say 0.02u, then you'd pay the same price, yet with wildly different absolute values. This is just random thought, and it probably will fail in hundreds of ways, but maybe something to spark your imagination.
> It would be much more difficult to exchange goods and services if we had to barter for instance. But perhaps you have some alternative in mind that I haven't thought of.
There has been very few research and development into decentralized economic planning. (Imagine if only a fraction of the development resources that have gone into High Frequency and Momentum Trading had been invested into Decentralized Economic Planning)
I am quite sure many here would agree that the Economic Calculation Problem doesn't hold much water nowadays (or at least won't in the near future) with the available computation power.
Isn't decentralized planning essentially the current economy? If I have a skill to provide a service, I can start my own business in my town to make a living. I don't have to accept currency as payment. I can more or less accept payment via other goods such as food for my family. In smaller towns this is still not unheard of. My father in law is a mechanic and many people pay him with goods rather than currency (he still accepts cash, however).
If a competitor opened up next to him, they'd both then compete, thus trigger your decentralized planning since they both have to innovate or come up with methods to gain customers.
> decentralized planning essentially the current economy
No it isn't, decentralized economic planning involves communal ownership not private (shareholder) ownership which allows communal management and prioritizing the needs of people and not the wants of those with most money/capital.
> If I have a skill to provide a service, I can start my own business in my town to make a living.
If you have a skill then under decentralized economic planning you would provide it as needed and not start a business (own or otherwise)
> I can more or less accept payment via other goods such as food for my family. In smaller towns this is still not unheard of.
That would be barter, it is more common to accept non-currency IOUs when doing communal work / services rather than directly into goods/services.
> If a competitor opened up next to him, they'd both then compete, thus trigger your decentralized planning since they both have to innovate or come up with methods to gain customers.
In a decentralized planned economy if someone else wanted to work as a mechanic then they would cooperate rather than compete.
What if Sharon is selling baskets for $10, and I found a revolutionary way to sell them for $9, I wouldn't be able to since I'd be required to share my trade secret with Sharon. What incentive would I have to innovate?
In a perfect world, where there are no corrupt or selfish people, I suppose it could work, since we'd all be working towards a greater good. But that utopia doesn't exist, and possibly never will without stripping the rights of individuals.
> What if Sharon is selling baskets for $10, and I found a revolutionary way to sell them for $9
The comment you were originally replying to was regarding non-currency economies, so first of all I would assume "require less labour" or "more efficient use of materials".
> I wouldn't be able to since I'd be required to share my trade secret with Sharon.
If you want Patent protection you currently need to share the mechanics of how you achieved that. If you use it as a "trade secret" and someone independently figures a similar or identical way then you are out of luck.
> What incentive would I have to innovate?
Requiring less labour on your community and yourself, if both you and Sharon are more efficient then you both have more free time for other stuff, even leisure or study. Currently if you are an employee in a private company if you make something more efficient good luck because you are getting to do more work for the same pay. (and the company might decide not to hire more people or fire people depending on how much labour you saved them)
In the current political-economy where most people are employees they are desincentivized from working efficiently by the threat of losing their employment.
> In Bullshit Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to "bullshit jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
