What if we woke up one day and money was gone? I mean, what if money just disappeared? This is an interesting idea.
Let us think about this for a moment. We are talking about a world where money does not exist. A world where we do not need money to buy things.
Imagine we did an experiment to see how people would behave if money disappeared for 24 hours. What would people do? Would they still go to work? Would they still be kind to each other?
This 24-hour experiment would really tell us a lot about nature. It would show us what people are like when money is not a factor.
* Would people be more generous if money disappeared?
* Would crime go down if money disappeared?
* How would people survive without money?
The idea of money disappearing is a wild one.. It is interesting to think about what would happen if money just disappeared. Money is a part of our lives. We use money to buy the things we need. We use money to buy the things we want.
So what if money disappeared? It is a scary thought.. It is also kind of exciting. We would have to find ways to get the things we need. We would have to find ways to live our lives.
The Morning: Panic, Pause, and a Sudden Silence
Imagine you wake up to the sound of your alarm ringing. You reach for your phone to check something. When you look at the screen you see that you have no money in your bank account. Your cards are not working. You try to use them. They decline. You look in your wallet. All you find are old pictures and some lint.
The morning commute, which is usually so busy, would just be a crowd of people standing around looking confused. Normally people are always worrying about money. That worry is like a constant noise, in the back of their minds. If money just disappeared that noise would stop and it would be really quiet and weird.
Fear is what people feel at first. The news says the economy is falling apart. By the middle of the morning people start to understand something important. The end of the world is not on television because the electricity is still working. People are going to work at hospitals and places that have water. Why are they doing this? It is because without money we can see why people really do their jobs. A nurse does not just work for the money. Because people need help and care from nurses. A lot of important work is done because people really want to do it, not just for the money they get from the work.
The Afternoon: The Barter Economy Reborn
When we do not have to think about the price of things, people start to think of ways to solve problems. What if we did not have money anymore? This means that people would have to figure out what things are worth to them. For example a plumber might fix a pipe and in return someone would give them a home-cooked meal. A parent who has a car and is driving their kids around might give a ride to an electrician who can fix a fridge that a lot of people use. This way people in a community start to help each other out.
Money is not the thing that matters, what you can do for others and what you can make with your own hands is important too. People do not care much about what the luxury sedan owner has, they care about what the person with the vegetable garden can do, they care about what the carpenter can make and they care about what the community organizer can do for them. The question people ask is no longer what things you own, the question is what are you good at. Will you lend a hand to the luxury sedan owner or to the person with the vegetable garden or to anyone in the community. The person with the thriving vegetable garden, the carpenter or the charismatic community organizer is the one people look up to now.
The Evening: Community and Recalibration
As the day comes to an end the first panic has turned into a nice feeling of people working together. Since nobody can buy dinner, neighbors are sharing what little they have to make meals in the park. They are sharing stories and things they are good, at just like they are sharing food. People are helping each other directly without needing money. You see the person you are helping. You know right away that you are making a difference, which is a good feeling that you do not usually get when you send money online.
This is when the experiment really gets to the heart of how we live as a society. What if we did not have money anymore? It shows us that money even though it makes things easier can also make us feel alone and disconnected from each other. We can give money to help someone without meeting them or pay for something without even saying thank you. For one day every time we do something with someone else it is personal and we have to talk to each other and be human. Feeling empathy for others is not something we do on the side, it is the main reason we are able to exchange things with each other.
Midnight: The Return and The Lingering Question
When the clock strikes twelve and the financial systems come on the world does not just go back to normal. The financial systems flicker online but something that you cannot touch has changed. For one day the world was a place. Our money did not matter much as the people we know and the things we can do. The world saw that our connections and our skills and how generous we are are really important. We learned that the economy is really about people agreeing on things not about computers making decisions. The financial systems are a tool but it is the people that make the economy work. The economy is about agreements and that is what makes it work not just digital algorithms and computers.
The lasting impact of this 24-hour break would not be people losing money. It would really make us think about what is important. We would go back to our lives with a way of looking at things and we would be careful. What if we did not have any money? The economy of kindness is what is most important and the economy of kindness never fails. It only waits, quietly, for us to tap into its infinite reserve.