Incream,
The simple answer is that bartering is incredibly more complex, subjective, and was largely unfair.
Money isn’t the real problem. The real issue is the distribution of wealth. I assume that if you had a limitless supply of money then you probably wouldn’t hate it, right?
The issue is that there is a finite amount of wealth in the world and a finite number of people. The question is how to distribute the wealth among the people.
The most successful system so far is capitalism, which essentially means that those who strive the hardest earn the most. However, the effect of supply and demand biases some activities towards either more or less wealth. For example, a hardworking artist may not earn much since there are millions of other artists doing the same thing, so here the supply exceeds demand which makes prices and earnings drop. On the other hand an actor like John Travolta is unique and earns a fortune far out of balance with the job done. If we could suddenly create a million John Travoltas then the earnings of each would come down considerably.
The trick to obtaining a larger slice of the wealth pie is to offer some service or product that has high demand and a low supply. So really it isn’t how hard you work but how smart you are in choosing the right career.
The process may at times seem very harsh and unfair but that is the best we have so far until we can develop a fairer system. Communism attempted to overcome this problem by distributing all wealth evenly, and on the face of it communism was an excellent idea, but in practice there was no motivation for individuals to strive for improvements, and such systems have tended to stagnate and result in net diminished wealth.
Sorry for the economics lesson. But I hope that helps.
Cris