Edit: I am sorry for this wall of text. I understand if you don’t read it. Lol…I have COVID right now, and for someone reason I’m either wired like a coke head, or exhausted like a coke head on Monday. You caught me wired.

Transporter credits I can’t speak to, but labor vouchers are something that has been tried in limited fashion in the past.

Basically, the idea is that they are not accunulatable by anyone but the person doing labor to earn them.

Let’s say you work, doing some kind of worky type work. You earn 1 labor voucher per hour. You live in a society in which housing, electricity, water, transportations, and food are free at the point of use. Your labor voucher provides proof that you are, indeed, laboring. You have your eye on a nice luxury item or an item that is genuinely scarce and not strictly necessary for life, and thus not provided free to everyone (I have COVID right now, and can’t think of an example. Game system? Aren’t computers made with rare elements? See footnote). You could spend your labor vouchers for this item. Let’s say it costs 20 labor vouchers. You work 20 hours, give the shopkeep those 20 vouchers. The vouchers aren’t money, though. They’re either digital credits, or little pieces of paper with “DrChaotica’s proof of labor” on it. The shopkeep would be unable to spend them anywhere, as she is not DrChaotica. They are either destroyed outright, or given back to the local governing body to be re-given to you upon completion of more laboring.

It’s an idea for socialism by people who are socialist, and also think we’d have the whole bUt nObOdY WiLl WoRk problem. We incentivize work through the voucher system, while preventing the accumulation of wealth by making them non transferable and no accunulatable by anyone other than the worker. In theory, you could be “rich,” but only by working a shit ton, and your wealth couldn’t come at the expense of making someone else poor. You wouldn’t be able to extract the value of other workers, and you wouldn’t be able to hoarde mass amounts of wealth, only modest wealth, as you’d have to be doing the work yourself.

Footnote:

So, among socialists, this is still a fairly controversial topic. Labor vouchers are often seen as a way of preventing the Socialist Billionaire problem that China faces, while also preventing the common critique thrown at left wing communists and anarchists, that none would actively work in their communities, especially in less hobby-like jobs like wood working or fuggin sculpting or whatever. No one wants to be a plumber after the glorious revolution. This allows for the community to have things that are entirely free, and provide a base level of life that is pretty high, while also ensuring that things get done, and no one is rigging the system in their favor. It’s not a system supported by all socialists, and it’s not always clear which group would or would not support that type of system.

Footnote the second, because COVID brain and I couldn’t figure out where else to slot it in. Labor vouchers could also be used on food, depending on the system. A ration system is often a scary concept, because people think the ration is the most the food you can have. But there’s also the type of rationing where the ration is the minimum amount of food anyone can have. You are provided with a base level of calories, staple items, and whatever is locally produced. You will always have access to that, and will never go hungry. But let’s say your community is trying to increase the amount of plant based food and decrease animal farming. Dairy may be on the ration, but meat is not. Labor vouchers could be used to buy meat, increasing the number of people willing to do work for the vouchers, while decreasing the amount of meat produced, and simultaneously ensuring no one goes hungry, and no one is forced to go veg if they don’t want to.