Hence the slow process, this is the problem with currency and money in general, by design it can store debt indefinitely allowing profits which is incentive to create scarcity.
Debt exists because of scarcity. Removal of currency/money and the concept of personal profit can be used to create abundance of our needed resources (food, water and shelter). This isn't magically caused by the removal of currency but by the changes in behaviour that tag along.
In agriculture for example, the current business goals are like any other, the most profit with the least expenditure. In an environment where the concept of profit is foreign the goal becomes how do we feed the most people with the resources available.
This would be a very different environment to what we have now, there would be a whole host of other changes to support this. It would be an extremely long process to ween off the concept of money/debt and create the infrastructure for something like this but I believe it is very possible.
Let's say you get rid of currency. What incentive do farmers then have to produce enough food for everyone? How does that produce more water?
Why would the goal become 'how do we feed the most people with the resources available?' Wouldn't it be: 'how can I gain the most advantage from the resources I possess?' With or without currency, that remains the goal.
Water was just listed as one of the items we need to survive as opposed to something we want, we pretty much already have it in abundance in the first world.
I'll admit I used to have the same view on this, where is the incentive? Why would someone do something without this immediate reward system? But it is this problem which I think would create the best (or at least most interesting) results. Without immediate reward the farmer will stop farming, why should he keep working for others? Agriculture then becomes a problem for society to solve in the most efficient way possible instead of a status quo job for a few individuals. In going back to the original point of this page, imagine the hacker community's response to that, a real, important problem to solve.
So to answer your last question, with the lack of currency/money there is no difference between them, the only form of advantage to be gained is in your social standing (interesting implications on leadership here), using your skills to help others and solve societies problems is your only way to gain any advantage over others.
If everyone's goals were pure, you're correct. But if I continued to farm and then caused the people around me to become indebted to me in exchange for the food, then I could perhaps force them to farm for me in order to pay their debts; of course, eating any food would put them farther into debt so they would never get out, but I wouldn't have to farm any more yet would still own everything.
I could enforce this by picking the meanest, biggest people in my town and feeding them in exchange for their protection.
You should remember that prior to the invention of capitalism and profit as a calling in the 19th century, many people in the western world lived like this.
