We establish a master database where all people stipulate how they would spend the equivalent of $150,000 US.  This must be as complete as possible for each person and needs to be stated in general terms to start with: job within 5 minutes of home, fast and reliable transportation over longer distances (i.e. 200 miles, 15 minutes), medium-sized detached home with a view of the (mountains, beach, lake, farm, forest, etc.), really good schooling for 2 children, weekly visits to a physical therapist, 8 rock concerts and 2 symphonies, a chance to see a Blue Whale, a trip into outer space, insurance, and so on.  People give each entry value, according to how important it is to them, to the point they have "spent" their $150,000.

At this point there is no actual money.  The people haven't yet actually bought anything, nor have they done any work.

As people put in the data, an aggregate pattern emerges.  We step back and examine the needs in terms of how much of each thing we want and how much we want it, as signified by the "monetary" value of the bids.  We also look at what production can be mechanized and what is involved in different levels of mechanization, in terms of cost to both individuals and society to produce manufacturing machines instead of the making the actual items.

[Some people will insist on manually producing things, and there will be others who will only accept hand produced items.  Works of art and homemade crafts are a couple of examples.]

This shows us the total of all work we need to do to achieve the aggregate desired production.  We then divide the work evenly among all of us to see what is required in individual terms.  If this turns out to be more than 40 hours per week, we may wish to reduce the total desired goods accordingly, meaning that we would not start out at earnings of $150,000 per year.  [Aw, shucks!]  We would find, however, that as machines last longer than a year, the labor to maintain them will be less than the labor to create them, and soon we could find our produtive capability at much higher than $150,000 value available in a year.

[The trick to prolonging the life cycle of the machines will be to make them as adaptable and interchangeable as possible.  Thus as needs and fashions change, the machines could be changed with minimal retooling.]

Some of us may decide that we do not want to contribute an even amount of work and will settle for commensurately less than the original $150,000 value we requested.  Others may decide they want more than the originally requested $150,000 value and are willing to contribute more work toward that end.  After everyone has registered what work they wish to contribute we will know our total of available effort.  This total will also be more or less than the original total projected effort, so again, we will have to adjust our demands a bit.

Neither the amount of total desires (based on the sum people's needs, wants and desires) nor total human effort (based on what work all people say they are willing to contribute), will remain static.  It will tend toward balance, though, as people see how much more or less of their needs, wants and desires correspond with more or less work they wish to contribute, and change one or the other side of this equation accordingly

In any case, we will certainly know most of what we want, and we will know most of what we can and will do to achieve our desired level of productivity.  So we can at least start producing something in the interim while we work out a closer and closer balance between our demands and our productive ability.  We would directly receive most of the value of work contributed so that there would always be just a bit more work done than needs / wants / desires distributed. To cover the difference between needs / wants / desires and agreeable types and hours of work, we would pay ourselves Utopian monetary units, which we could then use on an as needed basis.  This is our Utopian money.

Eventually we switch to second generation machines that build and maintain machines to produce the things that we want most (both in terms of quantity and value).  Least desirable jobs with highest value will obviously be the ones to mechanize first.

It doesn't matter what money is in Utopia (coins, shocks of hair, coins made of steel, shreds of gold encased in acrylic, wampum, whatever) as long as:

1) The people of Utopia all agree to use it.

2) They understand it has no value in and of itself.  They cannot go somewhere to redeem the money for anything.  It would be a waste of resources to hold something of value aside for redemption that should not have to come up as long as Utopians have a stable economy.

3) The purpose of money is to provide a relative reference of value to goods and services they want and jobs and leadership they may provide.

4) The total of all money flowing through the Utopian economy starts out equal to an agreed upon fractional percentage of the difference between the total of all things produced by Utopians and what is distributed.  The goods already exist and the money is to facilitate distribution of the last of the items on an as needed basis as Utopians move about.

5) Its value is maintained by not flooding the economy by printing more than replacement money, and by maintaining a level of productivity that balances everything they want versus what they want to do for work.

6) Utopians realize that as their productivity increases for the same amount of effort, the cost of producing goes down, so prices will fall over time -- this is to be expected, not feared; indeed, it is how everyone's standard of living rises while still doing the same amount of work. This assumes:

    a) we want to and can achieve a stable population and workforce.
    b) there is a smooth progression of new goods -- a new good that comes out and is a must-have will show up as an anomaly in everything they want.

7) Utopians will eventually arrive at a rate of consumption that they will not feel a need to surpass (one can only eat so much food, take care of only so big a house, play with so many toys in a day, etc.), at which point as productivity continues to increase they will choose to work less rather than have lower prices.

8) Continued increases in productivity can ultimately lead to no one having to work.

9) There will always be world treasures -- tracts of land that hold special beauty, (works of art -- jury still out on this), sustainable populations of all the earth's flora and fauna (with obvious exceptions like smallpox), a clean and healthy ecoshpere.  These have value and belong to everyone as heritage to future generations.