If money was duct tape, that would follow. I think of it as like gratitude (when paid) and influence (when gained). So we'd be grateful to the road-menders, or broadband-stabilizers, and they could accrue a big pile of influence. What will they do with it? Perhaps they want something stupid and pointless, like building a pyramid.

If we're not going to allow that, there's no need for money at all. We'd vote on what needs doing, and it would always be something like mending roads, and we'd all have to knuckle down and do it, through a conscription-like system, on pain of pain. It would never be fixing the broadband, though, because broadband is a crazy imaginative project, like building a pyramid, so there wouldn't be any.