Money might be obsolete in 40 years
You can look at money in 3 ways..
A global accounting system — to settle value of transactions between people.
A behavior control or gamification — to make people get out of bed and do things.
A way to channelize resources efficiently — balance scarcity with demand.
However it is a tool that really belongs to the stone age.. why?
It fails at global accounting — as it operates in silos and remains two dimensional that requires manual reconciliations, transaction reporting & taxation.
It fails in behavior control or gamification — as it does not differentiate between good or illegal behavior. It creates perverse incentives and does not prevent money laundering.
It fails at channelizing resources — as it does not account for things like environmental costs, family integrity and worsens wealth inequality.
What will replace it?
There will be at least 2 exponential trends.
- The robots and AI will take over jobs and incomes will decrease.
- The wealth asymmetry will keep increasing.
As the autonomous vehicles increase — it changes the availability and access to shared resources. It becomes a platform to deliver on-demand physical goods and services shared in communities.
As the computing power keeps increasing.. humanity will adopt new forms of decentralized surveillance and compliance. Reputation will drive human behavior in getting access to community driven public utilities and services.
The concept of ownership may evaporate as the cost of disposal and environmental damage may be way more than the cost of access to the shared resource.
Most people will be able to live purely on the entitlements they recieve for being good citizens or voting or crowd sourcing the right policies and helping AI to serve better.
The governments will launch more and more robotic services on top of autonomous vehicles as public services.
