One of the most significant ways that Post-Burnout America has detached itself from its predecessor’s legacy. The country maintains hundreds of complex industrial societies and resource-flows without standardized currency.

There was already a high degree of resentment against standardized currency in the Pre-Burnout. Governments had massively overproduced currency to enable their citizens to keep up with rising prices. Simultaneously, the ultra-wealthy used their currency-stores to hoard basic resources, weapons, and anything else that would increase their odds of survival. When the world-order collapsed, all forms of currency became useless overnight. Most of the dollars in America were burned for heat or nihilistic expression. A few were preserved by survivors for their “historical value”. 

Primitive trading started between factions in the first few months after the Burnout. With the Widow’s Passage and the creation of the Proto-Clans, it became regionalized and massively increased in complexity. However, there were no serious attempts at making a standardized currency. This was due to the following reasons:

• Resentment due to the Pre-Burnout
• Fear of being in debt/wage slavery. The creation of a standardized currency would also reintroduce the concept of debt. At a time with such low certainty regarding resource-production (most of the country was either farming or ruin-stripping at this point), groups could quickly find themselves forced to take on debt— which would be detrimental to their long-term redevelopment. There were also fears that the complete lack of human-rights would allow for wage-slavery and other abuses of fiscal systems.
• Threatening Immersion. Callers were specifically opposed to the reintroduction of currency-systems. Many of the new cultures simply ignored the notion of a complex economy.
• Fear of trade wars between factions (in addition to normal wars)

More than anything else, no major currency was introduced due to the sheer effort required. A group would have to print a large amount of the currency, distribute it, and then continually set trading policy, interest rates, and deter counterfeiting. There simply wasn’t enough bureaucracy to handle such a task, even for an individual proto-clan. 

Instead, currency-units were substituted with “trading-ratios”. Groups would trade containers of specific resources at predetermined rates. These rates were extremely volatile and changes in them were nigh-impossible to predict. This lack of predictability forced many proto-clans to engage in violent raiding just to make ends meet. Still, this bloodshed was not substituted for a currency-based economic system. Leaders were still fearful of a currency-based system putting their groups at a permanent disadvantage. There were also a few new developments:

• Many Proto-Clans were now dependent on the output various Lesser-Clans. The introduction of a standardized currency would massively empower these Lesser-Clans, as they would be able to make their seed-clan pay enormous premiums.
• Callers were using the “Immersed trauma” of these early raids to strengthen their cultures to a frightening degree. 
• The Guild, one of the largest economic presences throughout the Hungry Years, believed that standardized currency would threaten its system of resource-based interdependency.
• It was becoming increasingly unlikely that the communication-infrastructure required for monetary transactions, lines of credit, banking and other fiscal systems would ever be developed.
• The vastly different cultures being developed would make it impossible for any sort of “rule of law” regarding financial practices to take hold. 

This system of ad-hoc trading and raiding persisted after the Hungry Years as new generations reached adulthood. To them, the extent of violence in American economic systems was seen as an equalizing factor. A group that is starved, poorly equipped, and untrained can still pull off a successful raid against a well-resourced opponent and turn their fortunes around. And a group that has hoarded resources has no legal or financial systems to protect their wealth from being forcefully redistributed.