#moonmusing

Money is one of the most useful and yet strangest things Mankind has ever invented.  It is little strips of paper, or rubber, or plastic, or funny shaped metal or stone objects that we pass around.  Why is it that people are so obsessed with it?  What use does a piece of paper have?  It can't feed you, it doesn't make for good clothing or shelter, and it can't help you build anything.  Yet people hoard it, gathering as much of it as they can.  And now it's even more confusing with a lot of money being nothing more than numbers on a computer.

But people still want it, and they want more of it.  Because with it they can give it to other people and those people will give them something more useful.  It seems like such a strange trade.  I trade you this slip of paper, and you give me a loaf of bread to feed my family, or a hammer to repair my house, or just your assistance with a task.  Why is it we do this?  People say money isn't worth something because of something tangible, it's worth something because we say it's worth something.  It's all subjective.

Some people want to go back to a Gold Standard, were a bank note will get you a certain amount of Gold or Silver.  But even then, why hoard gold?  Because it's rare?  Because it's shiny?  Because it's pretty?  One would think silver, or iron or tin would be more valuable because they have far more practical uses than gold.  But gold is extremely valuable, and memorable.  While yes, we have lots of uses for gold, why do we spend so much time talking about it's worth?

In the end I can only come to this conclusion.  Money doesn't actually exist. It is an idea, nothing more.  We represent this idea in different ways, with funny coins or bank notes, but still it's an idea being represented by that.  And that is the interesting bit.  This idea is worth nothing more or less, than the meme that persists around it.  As that meme passes through the world, the world chooses to agree that this idea is true.  We chose to trade this idea, for things more tangible, more useful.  Somehow, this is the kind of insane logic that only humans could have come up with.