Money

What is Money? and why is it so attractive? In this discourse, I will try to comtemplate on answering these two questions. To discuss what is money, it is helpful to think about its origin. Marx gave a good origin of money in his book “Capital”. Money starts with exchange. The need to exchange produce (products) between people. If there is no need to exchange, then no point of having money. Imagine a small village that is self-sufficient. It produces all things that people would ever need, and produces are all shared, then there is no money. The small village model is basically what communism is, which is common in ancient time, and is practiced in modern time as well among small groups of people. Money appears when there is ownership of things by each person. Then, there is a need to exchange between people what they own. Imagine Bob produces corns, and Alicen produces clothes. Bob have exccess of corns that would like exchange with Alice’s clothes. The exchange happens. But when there are more and more produces for exchanges, money comes in to simplify the exchange. That is it. that is what money is. Money is a potential for exchange. And the price is a medium for exchange to happen. There are two properties of price that are important for good and bad: equality establishment and abstraction. price establsihes the equility for all produces both intengible and concret objects, which encourages ever dividing of labor to make up the econmic activities we have today. Abstraction property abstract away varieties of produces into a simple number that we can compare, which greatly encourages exachanges of produces. Now, the money comes in that holds the potentials for making exchanges happens. When the habit of exhanging of money being practice over and over, peopple starting to forget its origin. When money becomes the ends itself, as oppose to being a mean for exchagne, people start to hoarding it. With the true nature of money in mind, the attractiveness of money is the ability to make exchange for primitive needs, or something things that the person need from other people. With the money being the end itself, the attractiveness of money has three psychological aspect of as to why hoardiing: fear, illusion of grow, and competition. Fear is the fear of not having the ability to exchange for what you need in time when you need them, for example food or shelter. As to the illusion of grow, money as number has the properties of ever increasing when no limit. So increase in your bank account have the psychologic effects of a sense of growing, just like any othere game you play that has a number indicates the progress to a higher place or status, like number of stars or whatever. Competition is the competition with other people, the feeling of wining when you have more wealth indicated by the number on you bank account is catalye for having it more.

The statement “my goal is making money” is a common one. I heard that a lot. But what is really means is probably different for different people. It might mean that having enough money to exchange what I need when I don’t have ability to exchange, which means basically retiring with enough exchanging power. It might mean that compete with other people to show how wealthy I’m. It might mean that I grow at a higher place like those people I’m looking up too. It might mean that I can exchange money with the thing that I really want like a dream car. It might mean that I want to have enough exchagne power to impose my will on the world. It might mean I simple want to have money goes up with a lot in my bank account. There are some possibilities.