Every citizen will be identifiable on a labor data base that will confirm at the supply depot that they have put in at least their minimum required labor hours for their supply packages. All you will need at the depot is your card identifying who you are. If you want to call the digitally tracked labor hours under your name "coupons" that's up to you.
No, what things are called is of little import. Yes, that is much like the alternative I suggested:
"Perhaps the production centers sends to the government monthly statements of how many hours each of the people working there worked each, and then the government mails to them hard to counterfeit green certificates ..."
But better as less costly, with no postal expense (just computer to computer data transfers or electronic "certificate printing") and avoids the possibility that the worker might lose his certificate. The data goes directly to all the supply depots in the US (you may move to another state).
Are the benefits derived from having doctors, airline pilots, machinists, welders, police and firefighters worthless to humanity without money? If everyone just applied their energy to only menial activities, humanity would quickly notice the lose of the benefits from pursuing the other fields. That, in itself, would be a great incentive to spur activity in those fields that greatly improve human life. Do you want people, maybe someone you know and love, to die of appendicitis? The benefits of so many fields are too precious to people to be made irrelevant just because there's no money involved in their pursuit. For thousands of years humankind pursued its food without the reward of money. What greater evidence is there that humans will pursue what they want without the incentive of money?
That is the wrong conclusion to draw from last part, now bold. Correct conclusion is people work to get what money will buy. Societies can and have existed without money but always have some way to reward those whose work contribute greater benefit to the society more than the "free loaders" or those who create little value. HUMANS NEED INCENTIVES TO DO THING THEY DON'T LIKE DOING, but are needed.
(For slave based societies, these incentives are usually harsh - Do this job and you can eat and not be whipped.) -
I agree money is not essential.
Do you remember popular song: "take this job and shove it..." (Few enjoy their work itself so much that they would do it even is the pay were zero.)
Money also has nothing to do with reason why people will chose to work at easier jobs that require only a day or less of instructions as to how to do, rather than spend about 6 years of study in Med school a two years of internship after graduation. Money is just a convenient, very flexible, automatic accounting system that facilitates exchange of your man-hours of labor for the man-hours invested in the thing you want and can afford.
(BTW, medical internship is the last legal form of slavery in the US. The inters staff the emergency room during night and still do "rounds" during the day - lucky if they get 6 hours sleep and a couple to eat in.) Few will chose 4 tough years in Med school followed by 2 of real hell as an intern to become a doctor when they can get the same benefits by dropping out of high school early to change reals in a movie theater, etc. for other easy "Big Mac" jobs.
Your "Every one doing the minimum, gets the same" is even less workable than "To each according to his needs & from each according to his abilities."
You want to blame everything on money and ignore the extremely common facts about human nature.
Again I say and ask:
" In fact the ONLY* way your system differs from the current one is that everyone gets the same pay, regardless of the values of the service they provide the community. I.e. they get certificate each month for one "supply package." The result of this will be a great shortage of skill workers, like doctors, airline pilots, machinists, welders, police and firefighters (putting their lives at risk), etc. and long line of people applying for easy "Big Mac" jobs that any one who can learn to do in less than day. "
If you disagree and think there is some other important difference, please elaborate on it. Please answer the question or admit the truth of this.
I also said:
* " No there is one other, terrible difference: You get the standard "supply package" which has many things you don't want that you must try to find someone who loves them and wants more to barter with. - No convenient money and grocery stores where you buy what you want. For example the standard supply package probably has some canned or dried meat, but no fresh yogurt - big problem for me. "
But you have modified (or made more clear) that your supply depots are really grocery stores, with all sorts of different items on shelves and in refrigerated cases. I. e. When I get my "supply package" I open it and put the items I don't want /can't use (like diapers) lose in the grocery store's shopping cart and go to the clerk at the cold case where the yogurt is, and ask her/ him how many small yoghurt cups my two cans of beef and packager of dried beef are worth and get to swap immediately, no need to use the internet to find someone, perhaps three states away, who wants more meat than is in the standard "healthy mix" of foods in the standard supply package, and also who makes fresh yogurt he will give me.
This modification of your stated plan (a clerk at various stations in what effectively is a grocery store), is an improvement, but a costly one in man-hours wasted for many "product exchange clerks."
... (1) The "Supply Package" is just value given to what each individual will be allowed each month. While there might be some pre-prepared supply packages, it's not like these packages will sit in a warehouse spoiling. Obviously, refrigerated items will be refrigerated and available for inclusion with non-perishable items in supply packages. (2) There is no need to barter because, chances are, the person who has what you want, got it from a cooperative distribution center, which are partly set up for the exchange and swapping of cooperatively produced goods.
On (1): Glad you finally realize that the "supply package" is not as originally described a box of the things the average person needs for a minimum (or better if the community can produce more for all) living standard BUT a VALUE which is divisible into many smaller values, much like 100 dollar bills are. You also now admit that to get this value one must work (contribute their energy is way you like to say this) some minimum amount each month. Just to make discussion easier, I assume the std value package is worth 200 hours of labor energy and a small can of beef/noodle soup, BNS, has value of 15 minutes. As everyone's "$-rate" is the same this 200 hour value could be equally well stated as 200 dollars and as 800 BNS = 200 hours = 200 dollars or one can of BNS has value in terms of dollars of 25 cents.
On (2): Yes with exchange points within the Supply Depot, staffed by helpful "exchange clerks" there is no need for barter; but I note that with only a few clerks (or even none with automation like now exists at Home Depot stores), not many at various points within the exchange area, the many wasted man-hours of "exchange clerks" needed in the "grocery store exchange section" of the supply depot COULD BE AVOIDED, if system were like now: Just take your shopping cart thru the grocery store filling it ONLY with the items you want and when done go to the check-out area and pay with dollars (usually electrons ones via your charge card)
Please explain to me why pushing my cart with BNS etc. in it to the yogurt area, etc. to exchange BNS etc. for other things I want that are not in the STD supply package, making exchanges at all these different locations within the "exchange area" and wasting many clerk man-hours at the various exchange points (in addition to wasting more of my own time) is better than the current easy to use system where you shop for what you want and pay with money at the check-out area.
