That's always the first reaction people have so they don't understand what I'm saying. As long as you use something as a currency object which conveys tradeable value, you will have the same problems. That's how ingrained it is in people to have money, barter: It becomes almost impossible to consider an alternative which provides incentive to contribute without the problems of measurable, tradeable worth.
Consider these "experiments" of a universal basic income. Just in reverse. Instead of giving everyone money, replace money with a system that does not require money or trade.
I'm listening. I'm probably one of those people with the ingrained thinking you're talking about.
What kind of system are we talking about here?
This is something I slowly think about every now and then. Every time I mention it, someone pokes a hole in it and then I think about the hole. The implementation itself is the problem while the idea, I think, is sound.
All you have to do is show that you contribute, right? Kind of like a credit score shows you are supposedly responsible with money and debt. So like a "contribution credit score." That credit gets applied against what you do for a living. Like a replacement for salary, it says "This person can consume a maximum of this many goods and services per anum." It gets rid of money. And barter is gone except on a personal level (assuming you disallow it on any larger level).
It also gets rid of poverty and welfare programs, yes?
There are problems with this.
Everyone on the planet needs to be a part of this system.
This would require an insane amount of data on a person, country's population, etc.
Hackable. I mean, you need a computer system to track this. At some point, someone will get the idea of getting into the data and give themselves more than they're worth.
Disability. I suppose a workaround might be that once you are disabled, you either stay at your last "registered" consumer class or you get a fraction (kind of like how unemployment works now).
But the idea, simply put, is that you cannot consume if you do not contribute and you cannot consume more than you would be able in a capitalist economy. No more arguments about socialism, communism, etc.
Go back to a barter economy?