Matthew Henry John Bartlett

Dmitry Orlov’s article The Collapse Gap: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US fleshes out (among other things) my idea that money is toxic:

Slide [13] To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless. In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.