Imagine a world where money was destroyed. What would happen?
We would barter. I might grow apples and trade them for you building a shed. Easy.
This works, but not for long.
Eventually, we will come up with a few problems. Maybe you don’t have what I need but you want apples. Maybe I don’t need anything now but my apples will go rotten if I don’t trade them now. Maybe you only cano barter cattle but you only need something small in return. Maybe you want to build me a house but you do not want the equivalent value in apples provided to you.
People are smart, though, and problem solvers. They will look for a roundabout solution. Instead of bartering directly, they will evolve to finding something that is non-perishable, that can be broken into smaller pieces, that is widely valued by the community. This could be salt, it could be silver or gold or whatever naturally emerges within the society.
This way, when I am worried about my apples going rotten, I trade them for gold; and when I need a shed built I trade gold with you to build my shed.
And money has again been reinvented by the people. Not the government; the people.
We will see later how the government gets involved but if I was to leave just two thoughts with you:
- Money just represents the amount of of apples I have grown. It means nothing on its own.
- Money isn’t inherently evil. It was created by people to serve a very basic need. And if you were to destroy it, it would come back again.
