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chonglibloodsport ,

What you’re talking about, with families, communes, or other small communities, IS STILL WORK. It might not be compensated with money but it is compensated, usually with social capital or reputation. I do things for you and then maybe some time in the future you return the favour. All money does is allow me to (pardon the pun) cash in that favour on my own terms and potentially with someone other than the person I originally worked for.

What’s the problem with these informal economies (favours for favours)? They do not scale! As soon as the community is large enough that not everyone knows each other (the networks grow too large) then you run into the problem of being unable to punish free riders. If you do a favour for uncle Ted and then later uncle Ted refuses to lift a finger for you, you can punish him by telling the rest of the family that he’s selfish. However, you walking into uncle Ted’s office and telling his boss (who doesn’t know you) about it is unlikely to go over well.

“If I didn’t need to make money to live” is a non-starter. If you built a huge society with free food, housing, health care, internet and all that for everyone (all needs met) then you’d get millions of people choosing to smoke cannabis and play video games all day. The only way to get “free everything” society to work is with extremely small groups where reputation and social capital stand in for monetary compensation.

Lastly, I need to make a point about the individual and their choice to work for free for others or not. Take the example of an artist (say, a digital painter). They may be happy to stream on Twitch and give away all the art they create for free (with their Patreon revenue covering their living expenses). However, how likely do you think they are to take on a huge commissioned video game project for free? I’ll tell you: extremely unlikely. The free art is the art that the artist wants to produce. Commissioned art that follows narrow requirements for (say) character designs, settings, etc. is completely different: it’s work because it’s not the kind of art the artist chose to make.

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