Money is not evil. If you strip away the preconceptions and jargon, it is nothing more than a standard we use to measure value. What has warped this simple (and useful) idea is that “the market” has become the exclusive means for assigning value.

As the past decade or so of bubbles and crashes have proven, “the market” has no inherent intelligence. There is no “invisible hand” guiding us to optimal or even sensible outcomes.

Take oil pricing for example. There is no earthly reason why oil prices should fluctuate as much as they do. Supply and demand arguments fall flat, because the supplies of oil are known and and demand for oil can be predicted fairly easily.

Despite these knowns, the price of oil dropped from $140 to $35 dollars per barrel in one year. Why is that? Oil exporting nations did not increase their output by 400 percent and oil importing nations did not decrease their consumption by 75 percent, so the only explanation for the price swing is that some inherent feature of the market was responsible.

What needs to be done is not abolish money (which would be similar to saying we should abolish math or english) but instead come up with a more sensible way to assign value. One which factors in mid and long term goals at the individual, national and global level. A non-trivial task, but one whose exploration would be fascinating and whose benefits could possibly foster a whole new economic system.