I want a portable media player with usb and avi connection. I’ll trade you a dirty pair of knickers and a playstation one console if you can get me one.

Is that a fair swap?

Money is just a medium, rather than exchanging my services for a loaf of bread plus a slide of cheese, I can exchange them for money and then may be use the money for a piece of cake, instead of looking for someone willing to exchange cake for bread and cheese.

The key to your solution is found in your question political will-power.

The reason why African farmers are unable to get close to what you pay for a cob of corn at the supermarket for their corn is trade barriers due to politics. It has nothing to do with money, the developed countries simply put barriers to trade, in fact maintaining these differences, oppressing the majority.

Political will power would also be required to allow companies to move effortlessly across borders to bring wealth to areas with less wealth today. Today developed country workers are paid much more to do the same job that someone in another country could do as well but for less. In fact too many resources are being given to the developed country worker; that keeps the majority of other workers down. (I speak from experience, having parts of my role outsourced).

Extra-ordinary political will-power would be required to flatten barriers to immigration. Once people can move across national borders, then the wages paid for the same job should be almost the same across the world. With free movement of goods and services and capital highlighted above, then the prices of goods would be similar.

We’d end up in a world where everyone doing the same type of job would get the same wages.

Furthermore, the disparity in wages should drop. The CEOs in the US for example get much more than CEOs in Europe and even more than CEOs in Asia. Today we see outsourcing for low to middle paying jobs, when will we see that for top-paying jobs too? Never, no CEO will decide himself out of a job. But as people can move easier and information flows better, the most excessively paid CEOs will see their excesses curbed.

Overall, if you are in a developed country, wages will fall with top wages falling by much more, narrowing the gap between the majority and minority. Furthermore, as prices fall too, then the standards of living of the majority should not be affected too much: earn less, but pay less for what you use, so you can afford the same things. If you are in a poorer country then, wages will increase.

There will always be barriers so this integration will not be perfect. Barriers such a culture, preferences… But eradication of the artificial barriers to movements of goods, services, capital, and people require will-power but would improve the lot of the majority.

Then we will really have a global community.

In one of his short stories, Robert Sheckley describes a society where people don’t need or have to work, because most of the work is done by machines and everyone can get more or less everything they need for free. Businesses operate only because elected officials and office candidates pay them for promoting them to customers who vote.

We’ll then change to water, wind and wood perhaps. So you’ll be ********* and spitting across the teller, ******* to tip a waiter and using a bat or stick on anyone asking for more. On the plus side, there’ll be no need for wallets anymore.