is there something wrong with our money system?

no and yes.

first no: no there is nothing wrong with our money system, there is something wrong with our behaviour: basically many of us still ask: what’s in it for me? some of us are awakening to: what’s in it for us?

so yes: although it is possible to answer the question what’s in it for us? using our current money system, this question can be answered better using a money system defined in terms of use value instead of exchange value.

i explained this idea in depth in http://guts2trust.org/big-data-is-the-money-of-the-future/
also see: http://guts2trust.org/a-vision-for-the-sharing-economy/

the argument in a few lines:

to run an economy you need 2 funxionalities: coordination of tasks (a la mintzberg) and canalisation of trust.

currently we use money to realise both funxionalities, viz: when i know the price of something i can decide to acquire it or not, this is a coordination decision. and when i trade with you i don’t trust you but i trust the (exchange) value of your money. by the way, i guess transaxion costs arise from this collapse of 2 systems into 1.

now i believe that in the new economy these 2 funxionalities will be realised by 2 different constructs. in other words: i believe that our current money system will decompose into 2 systems, a coordination system and a trust system.

in this coordination system we operationalise the notion of use value: the coordination system enables us to calculate the effort needed to achieve a goal when cooperating from the perspective of what’s in it for us. now we can decide whether the goal is worth the effort or not, this is a matter of use value. this is different from trading from the perspective of what’s in it for me because then we measure the effort in terms of exchange value which in turn is determined by the power of the respective parties involved.

the trust system will be a many facetted system on top of the coordination system.

i believe that when you look closely then you can see that this decomposition is already happening, and this is why i look at initiatives like noomap, ceptr and yunity etc. i believe that they are working on this coordination system.

what blurres all of these initiatives is that they want to realise both funxionalities with one construct, just like our current money system does. i believe this is not going to work, the coordination and the trust should be addressed separately (this is a separation of concerns!).