Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

If someone who has corn doesn't want to trade for your shoes but he'll take a chicken, and another guy has a chicken and will take your shoes, you could make it work, but then another guy comes along and he'll dig ditches for some shoes but you need chickens, hmmm, this gets complicated very quickly, which is why creative humans came up with the imaginary concept of money, which sure beats chickens. Money is imaginary because everyone has to make-believe it's worth something. It doesn't have to be backed with anything tangible: no gold, no stocks, and certainly no crypto-data-mining. The only thing needed to ensure money has value is threat of violence in case your greed overwhelms your imagination. Only governments have the force to maintain the illusion of money, which is why all money is government money.

One of the remarkable things about money is that the amount is elastic: increasing & disappearing almost miraculously as needed. Banks are an example of this: for every dollar a bank gets it can imaginarilly create thirty more dollars, and the stock market can multiply a single dollar by the thousands using financial instruments called derivatives. Conveniently, when all this expanded imaginary money is no longer needed, it simply disappears...

Nothing is as ephemeral as money which is why it is such a powerful concept, and dangerous. Governments, being the purveyors of money, can take advantage of their power to manipulate it for political interests, lowering its value & thereby violating Government's explicit guarantee to protect the property of individuals. The stodgy old idea of a Gold Standard is meant to prevent Government's abuse of money by artificially limiting the amount, but shackling money is much more a hindrance to liberty than protection. Also, Government has other obligations to its citizenry that may override property, requiring it to manipulate money. The line between exercise & exploitation of money is fine indeed.