But even toning it down a little, if anything really were unreasonably effective, wouldn't almost everyone be doing it already?
Having a AGI that goes FOOM and fulfills all of your orders is comparable to having a circle of infinitive wish spells. The fact that nobody yet has such an AGI doesn't mean that it's impossible.
Money just beats barter on pretty much every axis you can imagine. It is massively better than the alternative of a no-money society.
Societies without money aren't barter societies but gift giving societies. Money doesn't beat gift giving on every axis.
Thus spake Eliezer:
It seems that many here might have outlandish ideas for ways of improving our lives. For instance, a recent post advocated installing really bright lights as a way to boost alertness and productivity. We should not adopt such hacks into our dogma until we're pretty sure they work; however, one way of knowing whether a crazy idea works is to try implementing it, and you may have more ideas than you're planning to implement.
So: please post all such lifehack ideas! Even if you haven't tried them, even if they seem unlikely to work. Post them separately, unless some other way would be more appropriate. If you've tried some idea and it hasn't worked, it would be useful to post that too.