Suppose President Beetlebaum held a press conference and said, "Here's the deal. We'll abolish the currency if each one of you will do the following: stay where you are and keep doing whatever work you're doing for the moment--that is unless you're in the financial sector. Those folks can take the week off, since you have nothing to do. If everybody continues to do their jobs, then everybody will be taken care of. If you need food, go to the store, and they'll give you what you need, but please take only what you need. If you work in a food store, your job becomes making sure that people can get what they need. And since there's no money, everything is free!

"If we all take care of each other, everything will work out. Please understand that no one is going to take anything away from you. You now own your house or apartment. Of course, your belongings are still yours."

So here you are, out of work and trained as a stockbroker. What do you do? Well, let's see. You don't have to work, but you have no worries about losing your house or anything else, for that matter. Here in your high-rise New York apartment, you've got a room that you use for your hobby, which is restoring old clocks. So you work on those for a couple of days and since you're not pressed for time, you finish one of the clocks. What to do with it? You can't sell it, so you have three choices: you can keep it, you can trade it for something, or you can give it away. For now, you can't decide. Then you remember your mentor, Sam, who runs a clock shop in Brooklyn, who has been generous with his time and taught you a lot. You decide to go see him and show him the clock.

So you get on the train with the clock and get off in Brooklyn down the street from the clock shop. When you walk in, the owner greets you from behind the desk. You notice that the shop is only about half-full of clocks. Sam says, "A lot of people have come in wanting clocks, so I've been giving them away, but some other folks have also been dropping off clocks. Some are for repair, but some are unwanted. In fact I've got so many that it'll take me a long time to fix them all. Do you want to help?" And you hang your clock in an empty space on Sam's wall.

Suddenly, you're doing what you've been wanting to do for years, what you thought you'd maybe do in retirement to supplement your Social Security. You thought you'd have to move out of New York, back to Poughkeepsie where it's cheaper to live. Now you're doing it with your mentor, living where you like, and having a lot of fun doing it. Your blood pressure drops forty points, and you stop taking that anti-anxiety medicine. Life just got a whole lot better!