There's a few reasons as to why I believe it to be practically impossible to implement.
If everybody has the exact same amount of wealth, it means you've decoupled wealth from anything that is variable, most importantly human individual qualities like risk taking, hard work, talent, brilliance, persistence.
In a world where you can't better yourself economically, most incentives to innovate or produce would cease to exist. To still get a functioning society, a deeply oppressive regime is the only likely answer. After all, why would anybody work?
I suppose you're right that it's not impossible in the short term, just not sustainable in the long term. If nothing matters at all and is pointless, societies' output will degrade over time until the point it is unbearable.
That said, this is current thinking. It's possible to imagine a different equal wealth world that is futuristic. If we get so advanced as to achieve technical abundance, any citizen on the planet would have a high living standard, say upper middle class. Which satisfies almost everybody. And the standard is guaranteed over time, there's no insecurity to it. And those wanting even more things, have everything at their finger tips. Usage based, not owning things.
In such a world, money becomes meaningless. It's no longer a way to reflect scarcity, a way to secure your personal future, or a differentiator of status. Everybody is materially equal at a high and lasting standard. Differentiation might then be found intellectually or in social status. But probably the robots have taken over by then.
If everybody has the exact same amount of wealth, it means you've decoupled wealth from anything that is variable, most importantly human individual qualities like risk taking, hard work, talent, brilliance, persistence.
In a world where you can't better yourself economically, most incentives to innovate or produce would cease to exist. To still get a functioning society, a deeply oppressive regime is the only likely answer. After all, why would anybody work?
I suppose you're right that it's not impossible in the short term, just not sustainable in the long term. If nothing matters at all and is pointless, societies' output will degrade over time until the point it is unbearable.
That said, this is current thinking. It's possible to imagine a different equal wealth world that is futuristic. If we get so advanced as to achieve technical abundance, any citizen on the planet would have a high living standard, say upper middle class. Which satisfies almost everybody. And the standard is guaranteed over time, there's no insecurity to it. And those wanting even more things, have everything at their finger tips. Usage based, not owning things.
In such a world, money becomes meaningless. It's no longer a way to reflect scarcity, a way to secure your personal future, or a differentiator of status. Everybody is materially equal at a high and lasting standard. Differentiation might then be found intellectually or in social status. But probably the robots have taken over by then.