what would happen...
 

if one day we woke up and money, currency, was worth nothing? and don't give me this John Smith economist mumbo jumbo that it couldn't happen, i'm talking hypothetically speaking.

does people stop working? continue working out of habit? no one to produce energy/food? what happens?

Anarchy, dude.

Start trading belongings for food and water. Can't see myself working right away, at least not until a new bartering and compensation system is put in place.

I'm not sure it's possible to simplify this situation more than that.

Dogs and cats living together.

People would probably start lame threads out of boredom

I could fulfill my lifelong dream of being a looter.

steal a gun. take what you want.

that's your gut reaction, and it'd be natural to think so.

but do you really think the natural state of a human is to want anarchy? would you think perhaps we'd have some leaders who'd try to group everyone together and implore us to continue on with our way of life? would we perhaps become an agricultural society, with emphasis on growing your own means of food?

i think if this were to happen, i'd try to get involved with my own neighborhood and try to help organize who'd be responsible for what (ie, form a socialist government).

ooh, free mcnuggets!

Hamilton's agrarian society rears its head again.

The problem I see with this, HA, is for currency to become worthless, I think we'd be staring at a situation where the sitting government had completely and utterly lost credibility, to the point of utter collapse.

Faith in a currency sort of translates into faith in the government, and what adversely affects the one has a similar effect on the other.

So if the currency collapses, I would think we'd be staring at a governmental collapse as well. As splintered as the nation's politics are, yeah, I could see anarchy. I could see, as you say, people trying to hold something together, but it would be on a drastically localized level. Northern California splitting off from Southern California, the Northeast doing its own little thing, etc.

It might even get more localized than that, because a worthless currency would play hell with the energy business, limiting people's ability to really travel to any considerable degree.

Yeah, the value of currency is predicated on a civil society, not the other way around.

that's what i think. it couldn't even be done on a region by region basis - too large an area. i think for society to remain intact (with drastic changes, of course), it'd have to be done on the local neighborhood level. everyone having the same goals - to provide food and security for their families. and when you shrink it to the neighborhood level you remove the need for transporation. and someone brought up the barter system, which i honestly believe would happen again.

so with the barter system and "government" being more intimate and "small", i think it woulnd't necessarily be a foregone conclusion that the world would go to hell.

To answer your question, I think all you would need to do is look at the counties with hyperinflation.
In the 20s in Germany, at one point, prices were doubling every 2 days.
In essence money was worthless.

Related question - does anyone think something like this will happen in our lifetime? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I'm starting a new career, putting some money away for retirement, and I can't help but wonder - what are the odds we actually get through another 40-50 years with everything "intact". Considering nuclear weapons, terrorism, the envrionment, technology and anything else. Will shit just fundamentally change in the next 50 years, for the better or worse, to the point where our current economc system and way of life is just obsolete?

I would invest in Nigerian oil wells via a 3rd party, to be safe.

i know nothing about ecomics, but i know the US Dollar is plummeting in value, and global economics depends on the dollar being able to purchase other country's goods. when that doesn't happen, who knows what comes next? i'm not interesting in talking about how it could happen, i was curious of what people thought if it *did* happen.

imagine how weird and surreal it would be to wake up and realize your money is worthless? especially if you're rich. just what happens from that point, that's what i'm interested in.

Mass hysteria!

No money = no capitalism. Towns would either have to enter into a shared, localised, collectivised commune or just resort to absolute anarchy. I can't think of a single civilised society that hasn't had a currency though, so I'd say the odds wouldn't be good.

dola

I suppose the closest anyone has ever come to this would be Germany in 1923 when it went through severe hyperinflation. I have read of instances in there when two guys sat down at a cafe, saw a cup of coffe costing 5,000 marks and ordered one each and after they had finished the check came back for 14,000. Workers were taking their wages back home in wheelbarrows during their lunch break and then again at the end of work. But even though the mark eveuntually reached the level of 1 trillion marks to the dollar, society never collapsed into anarchy, people just made do. Of course, in today's information age of computers and such I'm not sure if there would be any different ramifications.

that's what i'm saying, it wouldn't necessarily be a foregone conclusion that the world would plunge into chaos. wouldn't be a fun place to live, but i think people just aren't inclined for barbarianism.

The Blue Jays would have a realistic shot at winning the AL East.

The thing about that is, while you can make the argument that their currency was effectively useless, they still used it. It's just, they might have used a 1 million mark note instead of a ten mark note to make a purchase.

They didn't revert to barter economics or anything of that nature.

The currency still held *some* value, clearly - it's just that value was infinitesimal.

Zimbabwe is also going through this hyperinflation period right now.

I'm no economist but as I understand it, money is merely a useful commodity for the barter/exchange of other desired commodities.

If this form of barter ceased to exist, the tradable commodities ( food, shelter etc ) would not cease to exist therefore other means of trading for them would have to be established and would in rather short order even if that method involved the barrel of a gun.

Would there be a massive redistribution of wealth? Surely. Anarchy? Most likely.

People stop working or producing a product with actual value such as food or energy? No way in hell.

Free internet pron.

Well, do you want me to give you the Adam Smith economic jumbo.;)

Seriously, though, it depends whether the barter system still would function. If goods and services were still worth something, capitalistic society would still continue, but the system would be much, much, more convoluted and hard to measure.