There are many people around the world that basically live without money: How?

It's through the barter system where you either give labor for something else or something for something else or a combination of things. For example, labor for food and a place to stay instead of money. Making something you then trade to someone else for food and shelter.

There are many many people who live like this "off the grid" worldwide without cell phones or electricity or anything we might think normal here in the Western Developed world.

Is this better or worse than working for money? It depends upon who you are and where you live and what you want to do in life or the situations you are faced with in life. Everyone on earth chooses "rightly or wrongly" to do many different things. And personal enculturation (the languages you speak and where you live on the planet and the people and cultures around you have a lot to do with the choices you make within those cultures or whether you are living an alternate type of lifestyle in whatever culture or cultures you find yourselves in worldwide.

But, everything in the world is not at all like living here in the U.S. in one of the 50 states at all. Sometimes it is Nothing like this at all.

When I went to India and Nepal in 1985 and 1986 there was almost nothing recognizable except food and shelter (and even that was different then too).

So, basically spending 4 to 5 months in India and Nepal in 1985 was like for me visiting a completely different planet than where the United States and Canada and Mexico are. It was that different then. It could be more like the western world some places now but in most ways then it was like 1000 or 2000 years ago the way people functioned simply because somewhere between 60% and 80% of people in places like India and Nepal couldn't read or write. So, after this experience for 4 or 5 month with my wife and 3 kids then ages 10 to 14 I understand the barter system quite well. I found that hiring someone to travel with us to barter for us was much less expensive and more economical because they knew the right prices to pay as locals and what to do to get things whether they were food or shelter or whatever in that culture so we wouldn't become financial victims to that culture as world travelers unfamiliar with local customs.