I really think future human civilization must eventually choose to work for free. I just can't imagine a super advanced alien race continuing to force advertisements on each other and sell each other useless things and wreck their environment with small-minded individualism and greed.
Money is just a substitute, a direct symbolic compensation for those who can't recognize the indirect effect of their work benefiting all of society and circling around to benefit themselves again. There's no way we can achieve world peace and the cooperation necessary for avoiding catastrophy and reaching truly huge accomplishments if we still care about individually who has more and who has less.
It's silly to ask for something in return for helping others, because we already automatically benefit from others' good health, stability, and happiness. We're all on the same team here, it's ridiculous to refuse service or resources because someone doesn't have enough paper slips or a high enough imaginary digital number to "recompense" our effort.
Oligarchs can't exist in a world where people work for free. Our survival is directly tied to each other and not to an empty symbol -- we already know there's no real correlation between how wealthy someone is and how much their effort has really benefitted society, anyway. In fact, the relationship appears to be inverse!
I predict the tide will turn when so many critical resources are owned and controlled by so few ultra-powerful world oligarchs that society simply can't function, like a body with all its blood trapped in a few huge tumors. And we will recognize that deposing these few individuals will not solve the problem, because the system that produced this outcome is still in place. And since it's a system we created, we only need to withdraw our belief in it, drop money, and we are free.
We will let go little by little, choosing to not ask for compensation since people in need will be less and less able to give it. Then we will look up one day to realize we've been surviving just fine without money. And all at once, we'll lose interest in it.
Instantly, the oligarchs' hoards are worthless, because money is worthless if nobody wants it. Just like that, all their power is gone because we no longer acknowledge it as real. Not even their goons with guns and handcuffs will work for them anymore because their own paychecks are worthless. Not a drop of blood needs to be spilled.
It's like the New York bus strikes where the drivers continued to transport people for free, and because they weren't collecting fares, the owners of the bus companies starved. But the city survived just fine without "owners."
Think of it! No more working our lives away to chase infinite growth (an impossibility from the getgo), no more worrying about becoming homeless or buried in debt, no more seeing our neighbors as potential thieves or burdens instead of the basis of our survival and meaning. A maximally trust-based society.
I don't think this will happen in our lifetimes, but we gotta take the training wheels off the bicycle sometime. The training wheels were useful for a while, but we will eventually realize our own momentum is what has been keeping us balanced; not the training wheels. We've been free all along!
