Considering that modern humans have been around for roughly 200-300’000 years but the oldest known form of money / standardized currency dates back only 3000-2500 bce, what would today look like in a alternate reality where the concept of money was never conceived? Like I guess some form of “the market” has always been around, but still… what if?
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS, federal taxation authority, for the non-US audience) is actively disinterested in timebanks as long as they are only exchanging labor on an equal time basis. Unfortunately, the IRS considers exchange of goods to be taxable and therefore wants its cut. So timebanks in the US are pretty strict about goods exchange. There are other means for physical goods that skirt US tax law, such as Freecycle.