That's kind of part of the point. That's how the game starts out, but as you build up infrastructure (literally with the help of other human players that you'll never actually interact with, thank god), traveling gets faster and easier. Until you're driving delivery trucks down massive highways, and traveling over mountains on zip-line networks.
And that progress parallels the story in some ways.
Money is real. And please don't waste your time, I know the argument you're going to make and it's stupid. It doesn't matter if it's based on piles of shiny metal or not. It's real. You can learn all about it if you want by studying economics. You'll find out pretty quickly that there's nothing magic about it.
Jodorowski is a loon with zero qualifications in science or philosophy. I'm not sure why a person would take anything he says about reality with anything less than a grain of salt. Especially when it eschews actual, real, science.
Read up on the difference between personal property and private property