The idea of money

Productivity, success, wellbeing, influence, power and authority, and almost all aspects of human living is now tied to money. That is our modern society today. But the value of money gets derived from people. The idea that somehow money is store of value and people aren’t is based on flawed understanding of value. What is the value of a dollar, gold without people ? And the answer is zero. So the value of money is completely derived from people. Also money isn’t a very efficiently designed resource or tool. At best, its a work in progress.

Money fails to efficiently capture and transfer value across the society. Then why is everything so linked to money ? Well! The answer is because our imagination has failed us or we have failed our imagination perhaps ?

To get a bit of context, let us try to find a comparison of money equivalent in nature or the larger universe. And the best comparison I could find is “ energy “ because quite frankly without energy the universe wont be possible. So what has the universe done with energy ? The first law of thermodynamics states that energy is always conserved, in other words, it cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another. This arrangement has worked efficiently for billions of years without fail.

Now coming back to money. Clearly money isn’t as vital as energy for example. The survival of human as a species isn’t linked to money. But yes, the design of a human living inside a modern society is directly linked to money, as money is the key resource that drives or fuels an economy. Do humans need a collective economy to flourish or survive ? The answer is no. Will the current architecture of money survive ? Probably not, and with the advent of decentralised monies like Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, the shelf life of popular currencies in circulation around the world sort of comes into question.

The current design and architecture of money is based on the premise that a society has to fully buy into it, and then completely link its living to money. In other words, all the individual members of a society who are part of an economic system need to become completely dependent on money, and the idea is based on a concept that, these individuals will have to earn their living in the form of money, without it, their living inside a modern society becomes extremely difficult. Therefore, humans spend a large part of their living trying to earn as much money as possible so that they can pay for their living.

And the rules and laws that govern the overall design of money had to be manufactured, and because they aren’t based on real science or on principles followed by nature. These rules will never becomes as established as laws of nature. The fact is, money as an idea does not have longevity. That is also what the evolution of money shows us.

The history of money tells us that “ Mesopotamian shekel “, the first known form of modern currency, emerged over 5,000 years ago. And the earliest known mints date to 650 and 600 B.C. in Asia Minor, where the elites of Lydia and Ionia used stamped silver as well as gold coins to pay armies. Money has obviously evolved and taken a more complex form since its early days.

So as the society grows more complex, new ideas of money, and the form of money will also change and evolve. And it is already undergoing a change. Whether you like crypto currency or not, the society is now already exploring new ideas of money, and rightly so.

Economy needs a resource to fuel itself, and money is that resource. But not in the same way as energy, which is the most important resource that powers everything in the Universe.