Unless events push society back to a literal stone age - a hunter-gatherer existence with no farming - then money will be valuable.
Why is money important? Because it allows for the "concidence of wants" without which trade is impossible.
Join me in a thought experiment.
Imagine that the dollar has finally collapsed and that we live in a Mad Max dystopian nightmare.
In the center of this brave new world you run a chicken farm (appropriately defended by traps, barbed wire and kick-ass FReepers with sniper rifles).
This month you have costs - you need to hire a guy to mend the generator and a midwife to help with your daughter's pregnancy. How are you going to pay them?
They have what you want - but do you have what they want?
Unless you have some money there is no "coincidence of wants".
The generator guy and the midwife have no use for a hundred chickens! They need to replace their working materials (bearings, WD 40, medical supplies, etc) and upkeep their cars by trading with people who live a hundred miles away.
But if you have money then you can trade with them.
Carrying on with the example of a chicken farm - it's market day. There are a hundred customers lined up at the gates of your compound who want to buy what you've got - but do they have what you want?
Fifty of them have wheelbarrows of devalued fiat currency and bad attitudes. You don't want their bundles of useless scrip.
Forty of them will offer some form of barter: alcohol, batteries, hunks of homemade cheese, their young, nubile bodies, etc.
You are faced with the time and expense of evaluating forty different barter offers, many of which you will have absolutely no use for.
And ten customers offer you money: Gold and Silver. These are your favorite customers: their real money fulfills the requirement for a coincidence of wants. You can take what they offer you, and use it to buy the services of the midwife, the engineer, etc.
In summary: trade relies on the coincidence of wants, which itself relies on money.
At the moment we can still use fiat currencies for trade, because fiat currency still (sort of) works like money. But we won't be doing that when we've passed into Zimbabwe or Wiemar republic mode.
Hope this was helpful.
Your conclusions are not simplistic enough... People will not be gauranteed that the money accepted will be accepted by those with things they want ... No one will know what others will accept when the shtf. Accepting payments of 100 chickens may be done in script form. Perhaps, and that will depend on the integrity of the dealers. Just like fiat currency, bartering will be a game of trust.
Building relationships and communities will be key... Families will be essential and they will police their own... Ma fia will be huge.
Teeman
Agreed. PMs were valued by the barbarians during the darkest days of the Dark Ages.
The closest thing to an economic apocalypse in America occurred in the South during CW1. Paper money was worthless, PMs were not.
Very helpful, thank you.