From the beginnings of human history, governments and nations have used money. In the beginning the money was some sort of commodity money like salt, pigs, blankets, or beads. But as time and technology advanced, money took on other forms, the most popular being coins of metal and then bills of paper. Today the most recent form is bank accounts. All these various forms of money are either tangible, physical objects or representations of physical objects. For human beings, money today is considered to be a set of physical objects even when it is just in a computer memory some place.
So what is money? Economists have given many definitions, but perhaps the most
simple and most meaningful is that money is anything which constitutes a medium
of exchange. As is often the case, the definition requires more explanation than
the original term which most people understand pretty well already. So let's
just say that money is anything which makes the exchange of goods and services
easier and more efficient than barter. (Barter is the direct exchange of goods
and/or services.)
Money has certainly made trade easier than barter. Without some form of money
our economy would collapse. Regardless of the other consequences money in its
various forms has brought, it has made possible agricultural society, industrial
society, and our present information economy. This is obvious because we do live
in an information society and all the nations of the world have always used money.
But money has consequences beyond just making trade easier. The form of the
money has consequences. The fact that a money is a physical object or represents
a physical object has consequences. It is those consequences which these
articles exist
to explore.
A Whole Better World
I can imagine a whole better world,
Where people don't laugh at each other's pain.
A world where the sun shines on everyone,
And one's well-being is everyone's gain.
Must we, in fact, feed off each other?
Fool the unwary, to sell our wares?
Why not just look after each other?
Why couldn't we make their cares - our cares?
This world of mine exists within,
And here I sit, just all alone,
Prisoner of prophetic vision,
Prisoner of the Twilight Zone.
The good news is that this world will be,
And love of our fellow man exist,
Throughout all of Eternity,
Is how I see it - through the mist.
~Clay Adams
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