Register › Concepts › The residual unit of account
The residual unit of account
A personal, equal, expiring token that allocates small luxuries in an economy with no money.
Why anything at all
Pure moneylessness collapses the moment more people want a thing than there are things. Something has to allocate the surplus. The Republic's answer is to abolish money in all three functions that make it capital, and keep a residue that cannot become capital.
What it is not
It is not a store of value: it expires at the end of the period. It is not transferable: a purported transfer is void and destroys the unit transferred. It is not lendable, pledgeable or accumulable. It cannot be exchanged for labour, and it earns no interest.
How much you get
The same as everyone else. Issue varying by contribution, conduct, function or office is void. Nothing you do changes the number.
What it buys
Only minor discretionary goods, meaning things outside free provision whose production sits below the intensity threshold. Anything above that threshold is held in common and booked, and the unit cannot reach it. There is therefore nothing to accumulate toward.
Its future
Abolition of the unit is a standing objective of the plan. As production allows, classes of goods move out of the unit and into free general provision, and organic law retires the unit for them.
