> Money is great because it lets individuals manage their own selves, but I'm still a little worried about how fraud, abuse and mismanagement can wreak havoc in society when money is abused.
So we need an alternative to money because of problems that we know about and manage rather well? (And yes, we do manage them rather well. You might be traumatized by the 2008 crisis and think "omg money is evil", but you'd be missing the big picture of all of the improvement in standard of living across the board and around the world since the Renaissance that has been made possible chiefly by having money and credit.)
Anyways, there are no alternatives to money (and credit). The only alternative is barter, and that's extremely inefficient.
If you want efficient trade in services and products then you need a money-like measure of value that stores value in itself for at least the short-term, meaning: for long enough that people are willing to use that money-like measure for trade. Such a thing is money.
Not having money and credit means reverting to a state we were in centuries ago because without it there is no way to leverage barter into the kinds of trades we do today on a daily basis.
Money without credit is not that good either. That's basically what we had in, say, the Roman empire days -- not exactly fantastic.