Money

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend whose son who is in university told her that money would disappear in today's economy. An interesting theory which I had difficulty accepting. There was a reason that money developed. We have difficulty carrying the goods that we might want to barter and the exchange process for the house or car might be very difficult. We do not all have goods that the next person wants to trade.
Money has a long history. Humankind started out with barter. What do you have that I need? It went with specialization of labour. If someone makes arrowheads all day, how are you going to get the arrowhead from him? You're probably going to trade something you've just hunted with an arrowhead he made. Money comes into the picture as a way of solidifying the power of the state. That's why the Sumerians, the first agricultural urban society, were the first to adopt a concept of money. In other words, I've got a lot of stuff stored, I 'll give you something that says you now own it. In effect, it's a form of deed.

We come forward from coins to paper money and finally the thing that enables all modern economies, the concept of fiat and credit currency, which was developed in late medieval Europe, in which letters of credit and letters of mark allowed us for the first time to bank on the power of the state itself rather than on the value of the coinage.

Money will not disappear completely but the use of debt cards, credit cards, and the Internet has allowed us to complete transactions without the presence of physical money. It will be fascinating to see what the present economic crisis does to the value of money and our understanding of its value.