They should make a film about the soviet union. That would do it.

Many interesting ideas moving around in this thread. I'd like to further address this whole money thing... I realize there is a lot of arguments regarding "what is money" but I think that's a highly appropriate discuss for these forums, no?

On the definition of money:  Too often people think money "is" or "is not".  They say a dollar "is" money. Gold "is" money. Bitcoin "is" money. Or, they'll say gold "is not" money, or fiat "is not" money, or Bitcoin "is not" money, etc. Astonishingly, I've now heard that oxygen itself "is" or "is not" money. Enough of this silliness, money is not a binary condition, but rather exists on a gradient of utility.

Lay out all things in the world, from air to gold to steel beams, eggs, sand, human hearts, goat eyeballs, fighter jets, US dollars, and bitcoins... lay it all out in a row. While some might try to sort them into two piles, "money" and "not money," that is a fool's errand. Instead, all these things can be arranged in order of their usefulness AS money. In other words, each thing makes a superior money to something else, and each thing is an inferior money to something else as well. People don't need to agree on the specific arrangement, but it should be self-evident that such arrangement is not very difficult to do.

Precious stones are better money than sand (unless one lives where such stones are plentiful and sand is rare). Gold is better money than precious stones (because it's fungible/divisible/etc). Steel beams are worse money than cigarettes. Why? Because the value to weight ratio of cigarettes makes them far more convenient to be used as money (though steel is more durable, so perhaps you'd argue steel is the better money). Oxygen would be a terrible money wouldn't it? Because, simply, it's far too plentiful. How much oxygen would I ask you to trade me in exchange for my car? How would it be delivered and stored? Absurd!  

Do you see the point here? All things are money along a gradient of usefulness as money, and this gradient may differ in different geographic locations (on a planet made of gold, gold would be a terrible money). So if one dude is arguing that oxygen is money, and another argues the opposite - both should stop. Oxygen could be used as money, but it would suck for that purpose. That's the end of the argument. In the same way, USD can be used as money (and works very well for that purpose). Yet, it is still an inferior money to gold and bitcoin in my opinion, because it can be printed at whim. Once one has an understanding of the ordinal nature of all goods as potential money, then one can really appreciate why Bitcoin is so excellent for this purpose. It is a beautifully engineered good, almost perfectly suited for usefulness as money.

This whole argument hearkens back to the fact that money is intrinsic to barter - when you trade your eggs for a loaf of bread, and then use that bread to trade for a steak, you've used bread as money. Bread works okay as money, but it's not great (it spoils, has low value to volume ratio, etc). Thus, people who argue against money are arguing against exchange itself, as I have said before. To preclude money from society is to preclude trade.

And to say that society can exist without money is to say that nothing along that ordinal range of goods can ever be exchanged by anybody to anybody else. THAT is an absurd notion.

I also highly disagree with this. Each new person, when properly allocated as a resource, is a net-positive for production. Humans, on average, each produce more than they consume in resources. A world with twice as many people will be more than twice as wealthy, I assure you.  Indeed, how much wealthier has the world become with every doubling of the population?

Do not merely look at the mouths of people and assume they must be fed. Look also at the hands and mind, and realize they can produce and create.

Who said anything about abstract value? All that is important is the exchange rate - meaning the price, which is merely a ratio of one good voluntarily traded for another good.  My 12 eggs traded to you for 1 loaf of bread, puts an exchange rate of 12 eggs/1bread, and thus the market price for a loaf of bread is 12 eggs.  There is nothing abstract about that, and I'll suggest that it is not "religious", and that it is in fact wholly necessary to establish a rate of exchange before an exchange can be made.

Try making an exchange without determining at what rate such exchange will occur, and I'll cede the point.

You are coming from an a priori argument. You posit that price and exchange rate is not an abstract notion, yet would offer nothing but an ad populum argument. Markets themselves also are not necessary, therefore money is not necessary.

What I like about Bitcoin is that it exhalts and glorifies the abstraction to the point of being ridiculous and is therefor a near perfectly designed religion for money based economies.

I'm sorry but I have no idea what you're talking about.

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/79755.0

The article indirectly demonstrates that money is different from simple exchange, but the intended purpose of the article is to identify a fundamental flaw with money as I described above (i.e. it displaces subjective value).

In your example about 100 people in a room, "collectively agreed on" and "spontaneously arrived at" appear synonymous despite the apparent linguistic contradiction.  Regardless, if and when the phenomenon of labeling certain things as more valuable occurs, a higher operative syntax is created in tandem which effects the perceived value of all other goods.  A man standing in the room of 100 holding a loaf of bread will find himself changing his perceived value of that loaf of bread as he now begins to consider others' valuation of it.  And, I bet it won't even matter how hungry he is...this becomes a secondary concern.  This is why people risk stress/jail/death for money -- there is a higher syntax at work influencing their decisions of which they are largely unaware.