Utopia/Currency

The people of Utopia, in general, dislike the use of currency to purchase goods and services, preferring to barter with other goods and services. Although officially there is currency; the Utopian Unit. The Utopian Unit, unlike other currencies of Earth, does not have a value less than 1. The Utopian Unit(UU) is not made of metal, since the only practical way of gathering enough metal to creat currency from would be to carve metal out of the planet itself, which is the highest of treasons on Utopia. Thus, UUs are made out of various materials, ranging from tree bark to silk. There are seven official mints, one per State, with several branches spread out among their corresponding States. Near the mints are different kinds of buildings, such as factories, or others, depending on what material the mint is using at the time. Generally, a UU is made in the shape of a small sphere or circle, about a centimeter wide and of a centimeter thick. Utopians dislike using currency, as many problems arise from it, such as the possibility of losing it, or the weight becoming impractically heavy for high prices. So, to avoid the necessity of cumbersome currency , Utopians go out of their way to find alternatives. Mints therefore do not produce much currency, only creating a small amount, giving it out to distributors elsewhere in the State, and producing more when the previous supply has run out, which can take several months, even, in some cases, years.