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VoiceOfRa comments on Estimate the Cost of Immortality - Less Wrong Discussion
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Do ants have something equivalent to money? Do your cells?
Ants have an economy which is massively simpler than that of monetized humans. It is also massively less adaptable than is a human economy. Their interactions are hardcoded into their DNA, optimized for an environment that has persisted for many 10s of thousands of years without a lot of change because that's as fast as their DNA and natural selection can adapt.
Cells also, nonmonetized, have a hardcoded "economy." Human adaptability exists outside this cellular economy. This is why humans who live in cold environments, for example, buy clothes and wear them instead of having grown blubber and/or fur.
Ancient humans did not have money. They had much simpler economies with a tiny tiny fraction of the total productivity of monetized humans.
Note: informationally equivalent. Cells certainly utilize a variety of currencies, mostly energy in various forms. I don't know ants well enough, but I'm pretty sure an anthill or a termite mound has some feedback systems which control the foraging of ants and termites.
Energy is a resource, not a currency. Cells don't trade amino acids for energy with each other.
Probably, although we don't fully understand them. Also feedback systems =/= currency.
You're not paying attention. Let me try again: INFORMATIONALLY equivalent. Do you understand what the INFORMATIONAL role of money is?
Besides, "resource" and "currency" are not mutually exclusive. Until relatively recently currency (e.g. gold coins) had intrinsic value and so was a "resource".
Could you define what you mean by "informationally equivalent"? Merely writing a word in bold all caps does not grant it magical powers.
Informationally equivalent = plays a role in the flow of information within the system that is equivalent to the role of money in the flow of information within economy.
Surely it does -- it magically made you pay attention to it :-P
Ok, I don't see how that applied to the examples in question unless you expand the meaning of "equivalent" so broadly that it becomes meaningless.