Would this idea for a country work?

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6pack

Northstar
Say, a new country is formed. The ruler abolishes all sorts of money system in it. Everything is free to own or rent, free housing, free schooling, etc.
Any citizen can eat as much food as he or she wants.

The only catch is, you can't laze around doing nothing. You will have to do community service in any field you like for any amount of time you like.
Example - for free food everyday, you can work in the field or work or do anything (that will help in betterment of society and people around you) you want so long as you like that job. Meaning, if you like to work as an engineer or farmer or other field, you can do that. You won't get paid since there is no concept of money. Of you want a nee TV or other appliance you can just walk into a mart and get one. In return you just need to do work.

Will this system work in reality?
Without money, and with everything free will there be greed in a persons mind?
Where can the system go wrong & how cam it be tweaked to be better?
Waiting for your answers :D
 
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How are you going to keep track of how much effort a person is putting in? Some sort of coupon/card? That is precisely what money does.

What incentive would I have to work hard or attend college assuming attaining knowledge is not my aim? I can simply do something which requires minimal effort and consume as much as someone working 3x as hard as me.

What if everyone wants the Bugatti Veyron, who gets those?
 
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What if everyone wants to be an engineer or a doctor or a scientist?
Who is going to clean the streets,regulate the traffic etc??

Also how will you make sure that every one works for their livelihood?
People could always steal....

Without any incentive for effort and genius, how would development take place?,One would not have the zeal to work hard or make proper use of his time and mind if he knows that ultimately he would be no different than a million others in his country
 
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manu1991 said:
How are you going to keep track of how much effort a person is putting in? Some sort of coupon/card? That is precisely what money does.
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Maybe some form of community work sheet that records amount of work done.
Money is tender. This is trading your services to the community in return for food, etc.

What incentive would I have to work hard or attend college assuming attaining knowledge is not my aim? I can simply do something which requires minimal effort and consume as much as someone working 3x as hard as me.
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If you don't want knowledge, you can get training in whatever field you like. You can wear the best clothes you want and eat till you vomit, but one day you will get tired of you're useless life where all you do is laze around on minimal work and effort.

What if everyone wants the Bugatti Veyron, who gets those?
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Everyone can get the Bugatti, if there are enough around. For everyone to have a Bugatti, people will be needed at the Bugatti factory to produce vehicles. You can always share your neighbors Bugatti too.

Everyone can get everything he wants so long as he helps to produce it. That is the incentive here. The main thought process here is to change peoples mindset from I & my family to Me & my country.

if everyone wants to become an engineer our scientist they can become one. No one is stopping you. Your thought process is still stuck in the "me & myself mode", where you think that everyone will want to be the best.

Fortunately for you, learned people are more mature than kids in these situations.
Let's assume everyone was an engineer. Then, to eat food, some of them work part time to produce raw materials. You will ask why. Because living comes first. people in such situations come together to form groups to help with day to day activity. Tasks could be in shifts or rotation basis. So no one person would be doing the same task for long.
The point here which you fail to understand is that people will take up jobs that they genuinely want to do from their heart.
People are all different, not everyone will want to do the same thing. So if working conditions are right and there are lots of good people around who don't think selfishly, you can get any job done. Even taking out trash, etc. Besides with lots of engineers and scientists around some of those tasks could be automated so that minimal human touch is required in it.

Ofcourse, for all essential facilities like food, water, power, security, medical sectors, the govt will have to choose people from a database of those professionals. The govt can always put out ads saying these many people are required in this sector and so on.
 
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The amount of assumptions that you are making about the behavior of individuals is what makes your assertions unrealistic.Humans are inherently greedy. Rationality and self service is what drives our society. If all 'learned people' are 'mature' as you say, why don't the ultra rich people all donate all their wealth and earn their wages like the rest of us. What you fail to understand is no one wants to be a garbage collector 'from heart'. If you think that a majority of adults in the world today want to work hard, help others and only contribute towards the societal good, then you are living in some sort of utopian fantasy that I am unaware of. I am not even going into the other points since they are just absurd assumptions. Government maintaining a community work sheet? For 1 billion people? If I hitch a taxi to somewhere, how the taxi driver get 'compensation'?
 
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Though such a system would have been wonderful and would have made Karl Marx happy, it will not work.Communism actually aims to be what you say, but fails in real life because of all the reasons stated above. Also to keep everything in order and to make this kind of system run, there need to be people with more power and authority than others (which fails the purpose) and these people will not want to let go of their power. The system cannot run without a set of leaders or rulers and only in dreams will they be treating everyone just and equal and not keep unjust powers in their hands. China is a perfect example of this. They aim to live like this, but look what their rulers gave them... Basically, there will be no development what so ever without incentive. People don't want to work to have the same Bugatti as everyone. They want to work to be the select few to have it. If people would fit into that system so easily, doctors would be healing people free of cost as long as their basic necessities for comfortable survival are being provided instead of charging 75k per tooth implant or whatever(just an example, no offense to anyone).
 
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this sort of thing is happening in auroville , you are given food , shelter and basic necessities, except that you have to work and work for upliftment of human society
where is the downside to this? , why dont you go there and take a look :D, try living there for a while and see if you can work for the betterment of other people and not think about yourself. i did, 1.5 years! ,
 
If you want to answer this question then you simply need to go back and look at why the barter system and later the currency was ever used. After that if you're still able to visualize a utopia, then you've solved life.
 
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6pack said:
I shouldn't have started such a stupid thread. My mistake.
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The only stupid question/query is the one which isn't asked!

It's a good idea, in theory. It would work fantastic with animals.. and it generally does if you look at nature. Pack animals live in small and large packs in a similar sort of utopia. Humans can't and won't.

Man is a social animal. We want to live in groups and form societies. Why did we start doing that? Well, I feel the basic necessity would be protection. You are stronger in a group rather than being alone. Apart from that, different people have different skills which may benefit the group as a whole.

But at the same time, man also the need to feel distinct and unique. There should be something that has to feed the ego. There has to be a sense of direction. This is where Communism failed. If not on money, there will be something else that will be used to wield authority and power.

Even if you assume that no one will be greedy and will work with the most honest and pure intentions, there will be a need to equate the value of goods and services. Who decides whether 3 days of working in the field is good enough price to pay for a mobile? This will give rise to some sort of barter system, or currency. And before you know it, its 2013! :P
 
The work done by someone should be assessed on experience , quality of work , need of the product , amount of work , time worked , nature(difficulty) of work , no. of available persons who can do that work and many other factors. So assessing amount of work done is not easy and can't be done by work sheets if different people are doing different types of work.
 
The concept of money is not bad. Its just that too much money with few people is what is making you think in the other direction.
 
6pack said:
I shouldn't have started such a stupid thread. My mistake.
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Actually not a stupid thread, The thing which you are describing fits well for the definition of a Resource Based Economy system like the venus project. most of the labour and repetitive tasks are to be automated by the use of science and technology. and as money is not there the need for various services are not needed by default such as (legal system, law, government, banking etc.). Ask yourself the question, why does only the human species need to pay to live on the earth?
working in community actually makes the life easier not difficult. check out this presentation by Peter Joseph where he answers common questions related to RBE

this other presentation is also related check this out too
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35189045/June 26 2013/Human nature.pptx
 
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kippu said:
this sort of thing is happening in auroville , you are given food , shelter and basic necessities, except that you have to work and work for upliftment of human society
where is the downside to this? , why dont you go there and take a look :D, try living there for a while and see if you can work for the betterment of other people and not think about yourself. i did, 1.5 years! ,
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But aren't the members asked to donate a fees? Thats what I have heard.
 
sharktale1212 said:
But aren't the members asked to donate a fees? Thats what I have heard.
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no fees, you gotta work at something or the other, some part of money earned every month does go back into auroville,but its not mandatory , and no one stays there to earn money anyway , its utopian thinking, the flaws are apparent once you are inside the system ,

although the one good thing outta staying there is i am very easily content with things :D
 
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