'Shopping' in an Egalitarian Society
by John Spritzler
October 26, 2025
How, one might ask, would the sharing economy*--a moneyless economy based on the principle of "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need and with 'reasonable' determined by the local assembly of egalitarians"--actually work, from the point of view of a customer walking into a store to obtain an item or service? How, exactly, would it be determined by the person in charge at the store--the "store person"--whether the customer has the right to take for free a product or service available at the store, or whether instead the customer only has the right to barter for it?
Here's how.
The store person would ask the customer if he/she is a member of the sharing economy and, if so, to present his/her current valid sharing economy membership card. If the customer cannot present such a membership card then the customer may only barter (with the store person acting on behalf of the local community) for what the store offers. (Yes, barter is extremely inconvenient and there is no guarantee that what the customer has to offer in barter is what the store person would be willing to accept; this is one reason that, while membership in the sharing economy is voluntary, most people would wish to join it.)
If the customer does present a membership card, then the store person will inspect it to confirm that it appears to be a genuine card** issued by the local assembly of egalitarians with an expiration date that has not passed and with a signature on it of the owner of the card (signed when the card was first received by its owner). In this case the store person asks the customer to write his/her signature on a pad of paper to confirm that it matches the signature on the card (this proves the card is not a stolen card.) Now the customer may have for free from the store whatever he/she needs or reasonably desires (with scarce things equitably rationed according to need by the method determined by the local assembly of egalitarians.)
In order for this to work, here's what else happens.
The local assembly of egalitarians, in voluntary federation with other local assemblies of egalitarians, joins with other local communities in a sharing economy, as discussed in more detail in "What Replaces the "Free Market" in an Egalitarian Sharing Economy?" The local community may be in more than one such sharing economy with, presumably, different (possibly overlapping) sets of other local communities. As a result of the mutual agreements on which these sharing economies are based, goods and services from both other local communities as well as from the local community where the store is located are available at the store.
An individual in the local community obtains his/her sharing local community sharing economy membership card from the economic enterprise of which he/she is a worker; the economic enterprise itself has been granted membership in the sharing economy by the local assembly of egalitarians.*** The local assembly of egalitarians provides to the person, delegated democratically by the workers of the economic enterprise, exactly as many local community sharing economy membership cards as there are workers in the enterprise; the cards have an expiration date on them. This delegated person in turn gives a membership card to each worker in the economic enterprise. New cards are issued periodically this way with subsequent expiration dates.
Note that this entire procedure is simple, far simpler than our current money-based system. Furthermore, it does not entail any personal digital information stored in any central place.
-------------------------------
* As discussed in detail in "Thinking about Revolution" and "What Replaces the 'Free Market' in a Sharing Economy?" and "What Is an Egalitarian Economy" Briefly, a sharing economy is a mutual agreement among local communities to share economic wealth with each other on the basis of the principle: "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need" with "reasonable" determined by the local assembly of egalitarians. The reasonable ability of children and of people physically or mentally incapable of doing useful work or prevented from doing useful work by the absence of jobs or transportation to a suitable job, or of people past a reasonable retirement age, or of people willing to work but wrongfully denied the opportunity to do so, is of course considered to be zero, which means they are considered to be contributing according to reasonable ability no matter what; also attending school or an apprentice program, etc., is considered doing useful work.
** These membership cards would, like money currency today, be hard to counterfeit** (and illegal to counterfeit, of course.) "Hard to counterfeit" does not mean impossible to counterfeit, of course. But paper money has been used for hundreds of years satisfactorily despite not being impossible to counterfeit. All that is required is that the item--paper money or a sharing economy membership card--be reasonably difficult to counterfeit coupled with the fact that it is illegal to counterfeit and the penalty for doing so is substantial.
*** Every place (a physical or virtual place) at which a person does work that counts as "contributing reasonably according to ability" is an economic enterprise. Not only factories but schools and hospitals, etc. are economic enterprises. People who do work as individuals rather than jointly with others (such as a hot dog vendor on the street, or a person caring for their own children at home) form associations (or 'guilds' or what have you.) Economic enterprises, as a single entity, are judged by the local assembly of egalitarians to be, or not to be, members of the sharing economy according to whether they enjoy a reputation (as discussed further here) for doing useful work according to ability and not hogging resources unfairly. If an economic enterprise is a member of the sharing economy then automatically all of the workers in it are also members of the sharing economy (unless the local assembly of egalitarians denies membership to a specific individual for some reason) and the enterprise may take from the sharing economy stores what it needs or reasonably desires.