THe money system is actually a very effeciant system, developed over millenum of try and error. Much of what we deal with in terms of legal agreements and contracts go back 3-4 thousands years ago.
Historians freaked out when they figured out that the Vikings used runes for more than just cerimonial stuff and used them for corrisondance. THey thought well will figure out what they talked about and get some of the earliest literature known in Northern Europe. You know what these letters turned out to be? Some were love letters, true, but the vast majority were as like the following:
I own you 2 sheep for the use of your cow in my feild and the flour I took. I will get you them by next fall.
-Sven
Its been two months since last fall and I still haven't heard from you. I want my 2 sheep. Don't make me walk all the way over there and kick your ass.
-Eric
Barter and trade amoung humans is natural. It's built into how we act and think, to try to control that aspect of human nature is to invite trouble. The results to societies can be dangerous. Look what happened in China. Overpopulation consentrated in areas has always caused problems in China, harse winters would cause startation and hundreds and thousands would die. Each in there own little communities, some would have enough, some would have more, and some wouldn't have enough and die. So you know what China's solution was. ALright everybody you must give all your food to the government, everything. Then it would be given back out according to need. So it sounds resonable, you know the whole utopian dream, everybody gets there fair share. So the first year it didn't work, people died. Ok orginization failure, fix it and try again, and again, and again. You know what the net result was? Thirty million dead. Oopsie your freind the government was the direct cause in one of the worst humanintarian disaster in human history (1959-61). Almost as bad as the revolution itself. Well it did cut down on some "exess population" and added some extra revanue to the state in terms of food exports. (you know it seems to me this population could be sort of... you know on purpose. Kinda like the forced abortion things China does nowadays... hmmm). It wasn't until people were given back partial control of ther food product that this "famine" cesced. And now people praise china for being able to feed 22% of the worlds populatation. Ya what-ever. A lesson learned from millions of people dead.
Thats why we can't allow governments to be socialist forces, because everybody is human and if you even have good intentions you still screw up. I feel bad enough when I misjudge something and fry a computer. What if my mistake killed ten thousand people? If anybody in the capitolistic system screws up all that is hurt is the owners and the employees of a company, and there is always some other company to pick up the slack. In the america there have never been any mass starvations since the pilgrams dropped the communal distrubution of food and started trading amoung themselves and the Indians (hence thanksgiving day). Sure people are hurt here and there, but nobody starves to death, even during the worst of the dust bowl when the majority of production of food dried to dust (global warming haha), it was never people helped out and privite institutions gave away food to those that couldn't afford it. All government welfare during the time was in the form of work details and widespread projects like the highway system and the developement of the tennesee damn projects... Many modern economists contend that Rosevelt's meddling in the privite sector actually prolonged the Depression. It wasn't until after WW2 when returning GI's had big bank accounts stored over the war and the privitely owned manufacturing base was released from their wartime contracts was when the economy for the US really took off. This private sector armed with the years of research they've amassed during the war, lead to phenominal advances in plastics, medicine, and electronics amoung others that got use were we are today.
The only way the Star Treck model would work is if every person would be highly educated (probably up to a level of a major in econimics) and volentarially fuffilled there role in society, would a moneyless system be possible. Distrubution of resources would be automatic and the people involved would have to know what to do if the distrubution became distrupted. (I suppose replicators would help alot) You'd have to agree to a base set of standards, widely known and understandable by most people. A centralized monopoly controlling everything would be too easily corrupted and prone to failure... I don't know how you could do that without money today, but I suppose if the earth politics every realy settled down and the governments would f-off I think people would have a chance to figure out something really cool.