Money shapes a large part of our everyday choices. Housing, transportation, education, energy, and Internet access generally require sufficient income. Yet as digitalization and artificial intelligence advance and debates about inequality intensify, another question is becoming increasingly important: do we really need to eliminate money in order to reduce our dependence on it?

This question leads to a more concrete issue than the dramatic idea of a society in which money has completely disappeared: the decommodification of certain essential needs. In other words, could a society continue to use money while ensuring that access to certain essential goods and services no longer depends exclusively on a person’s immediate ability to pay?

This perspective provides one possible entry point into the debate about post-capitalism. It encourages us to look differently at universal services, the commons, automation, and guaranteed income. Above all, it raises a fundamental question about the role we want money to play in the economy of the future.

A Moneyless World Is Not the Only Way to Rethink the Economy

Imagining a moneyless economy may seem radical. Money performs several highly practical functions: it facilitates exchange, provides a way to express prices, and serves as a store of value.

But reducing our dependence on money does not necessarily mean abolishing it.

Our societies already include areas in which the connection between consumption and immediate payment is partially broken. Depending on the country and its social model, public education, certain infrastructure, healthcare services, or public facilities may be accessible without direct payment at the point of use, even though they obviously involve costs that must be collectively financed.

The real question therefore becomes: how far could this principle be extended?

This is where the concept of universal services comes into play. Instead of guaranteeing only an income that allows people to purchase what they need, a society can also choose to guarantee direct access to certain services.

These fundamental services could include:

  • a basic level of healthcare;
  • accessible education and training;
  • decent housing or effective protection against homelessness;
  • a minimum amount of energy;
  • essential mobility;
  • sufficient digital connectivity to participate in professional and social life.

Such a system would not necessarily eliminate markets. People could continue to buy goods, invest, save, and choose between different offers. However, their ability to meet certain fundamental needs would be less directly tied to their disposable income.

The debate about post-capitalism can therefore be approached not as an attempt to instantly replace the existing system, but as a discussion about the boundary between what should be governed by markets and what could be guaranteed independently of them.

Universal Services and Guaranteed Income: Two Different Approaches

Two ideas play an important role in contemporary discussions about the future of the economy: guaranteed income and universal services.

They may pursue similar objectives, but they rely on very different mechanisms.

A guaranteed income operates through purchasing power. It provides individuals with financial resources that they can then use according to their own priorities. This approach therefore places significant emphasis on individual autonomy.

Universal services follow a different logic. Society collectively organizes or finances access to certain resources considered essential. The objective is not necessarily to provide people with more money, but to reduce the amount of money they need to meet essential needs.

Consider a simple example.

Someone who must devote a large share of their monthly income to housing, transportation, energy, and Internet access needs a relatively high income before they can even meet other needs. If some of these costs are significantly reduced through collective infrastructure or universal guarantees, the level of income required to participate fully in society may also decrease.

These approaches nevertheless raise important questions. How should such programs be financed? Which services should be considered essential? How can quality and individual choice be preserved? What role should private companies play? And how can universal access be provided without encouraging inefficient use of certain resources?

The debate therefore cannot simply be reduced to a choice between “markets” and “free services.” It is about determining which mechanisms are best suited to which needs.

Is Artificial Intelligence Changing the Economic Value of Work?

The rise of artificial intelligence adds a new dimension to this debate.

For much of industrial history, increases in productivity relied on machines capable of amplifying or replacing primarily physical tasks. Digital systems and AI are now extending automation into intellectual activities such as data processing, writing, translation, programming, administrative assistance, document analysis, and content production.

This development raises a fundamental question: if a growing share of economic value can be produced with less human labor, how should the benefits of that productivity be distributed?

It would be excessive to conclude that human work is destined to disappear. Technological history shows that automation can also transform occupations, shift the skills that employers demand, and create new forms of activity.

However, AI makes a longstanding tension more visible. In an economy where access to resources depends heavily on income from employment, profound changes in the labor market can have significant social consequences.

This transformation helps explain why guaranteed income, lifelong learning, and universal services regularly appear in discussions about the economy of the future.

The question therefore extends beyond employment itself: to what extent should an individual’s material security depend on their ability to sell their labor on a market?

The Commons Offer Another Way to Think About Ownership

Thinking about post-capitalism also means considering the role of the commons.

A common good is not simply something that is free. It is a resource managed according to rules that allow a community to preserve it, use it, and share its value.

Examples can be both physical and intangible: natural resources, knowledge, open-source software, open data, or shared infrastructure.

The digital age has given this model greater visibility. Information resources can now be produced collectively and made available to very large numbers of people without requiring every individual to purchase each piece of information they consult.

Open-source software also relies on forms of production and sharing that do not always correspond to the traditional model of a product sold separately to each user.

This does not mean that such resources cost nothing to produce. Servers, human labor, maintenance, and infrastructure still need to be financed. But the relationship between individual payment and access to a resource can be fundamentally different.

This distinction is essential for understanding what an economy less dependent on money might actually mean. The goal is not to assume that resources can somehow become cost-free, but to develop different ways of distributing their costs and benefits.

What Would Less Dependence on Money Actually Look Like?

Rather than imagining an entirely new society appearing overnight, we can examine our dependence on money through very practical situations.

In healthcare, for example, the question is how much access to essential treatment should depend on an individual’s financial resources and how much could be collectively supported.

The same issue applies to education and training. Should the ability to acquire new skills depend primarily on a person’s capacity to pay for training, or should lifelong learning be made more broadly accessible?

Similar questions arise with transportation, energy, and Internet access. A society could decide to guarantee a minimum level of access to certain services while continuing to charge for additional consumption.

This way of thinking helps move beyond a simplistic opposition between capitalism and a moneyless economy.

A society could retain prices, private companies, savings, and competitive markets while deciding that certain needs should never be entirely dependent on individual income.

Several practical questions can help evaluate economic proposals based on this principle:

  • Does the system genuinely guarantee access to the service, or does it merely reduce its price?
  • Is its funding sustainable over the long term?
  • Does it promote individual autonomy?
  • Does it reduce inequalities in access?
  • Does it preserve sufficient resources for future generations?
  • Who determines the rules, and how can those rules evolve?
  • What mechanisms can prevent abuse, shortages, or declining quality?

These questions make it possible to examine economic proposals without assuming that a single model can solve every problem.

The Ecological Transition Makes the Question of Sharing Even More Important

Thinking about an economy that is less dependent on money inevitably intersects with questions about environmental limits.

Growth in material consumption cannot be considered independently of the resources required to manufacture goods, transport products, power infrastructure, and process waste.

The circular economy seeks, among other things, to extend the lifespan of products, encourage repair and reuse, and reduce the extraction of new resources.

This approach can also change the way we think about ownership.

Do we really need to individually own every object that we use only occasionally? Could rental, sharing, repair, and pooling systems provide the same services while consuming fewer resources?

A library has long provided a simple example. Its purpose is not to ensure that every person owns thousands of books, but to enable a community to access a large collection through shared infrastructure.

Applied to other sectors, this logic encourages us to think more in terms of access, use, and commons rather than individual accumulation.

Post-Capitalism Ultimately Raises a Question of Priorities

Discussions about the future of the economy can quickly become abstract when they focus exclusively on the disappearance of money or the complete replacement of one economic system with another.

Yet a much more immediate question deserves attention: how much of our lives should depend directly on our ability to pay?

This is where discussions about the commons, artificial intelligence, guaranteed income, the circular economy, and universal services begin to converge.

They do not all provide the same answer. However, they show that between a fully market-driven economy and a hypothetical world without money lies a wide range of hybrid models.

The challenge of post-capitalism may therefore be less about eliminating money than redefining its role: retaining currency as a tool for exchange while considering the areas in which it should not be the only gateway to healthcare, knowledge, mobility, energy, or participation in society.

This is precisely the kind of reflection encouraged by L’ère du post-capitalisme : vers un monde sans argent ?, by Léwis Verdun. The book explores contemporary monetary, technological, social, and environmental transformations, providing readers with reference points for better understanding debates surrounding post-capitalism and the economy of the future.

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