> money is exchanged for goods and services is just so foundational

it is in all large societies. That's true. But it is not in most small primitive societies. SO it's not like a law of nature, but more that we haven't found a system that works as well for large groups.

The trouble is that capitalism also has it's problems, and they're getting exacerbated by technological advancements. If you automate everything at a certain point there's just nothing to do for a large part of the population. And at that point the system stops working.

In science fiction we would get the 'post scarcity society', but nobody knows how that should work.

The UBI systems I've seen proposed that just might work are a sort of golden middle between those two. Not that different from the current welfare system we have in NL, but taking out the stress factor and stigma of receiving welfare.