What is Money?
Money is essential to modern commerce as a medium of exchange. In earlier days, money took the form of material objects. As commerce grew, certificates redeemable in gold became popular.
Most contemporary money is no more than a number stored on a computer hard drive and has Value only because people agree to accept it in exchange for things of real value, like their labor.
The fact that most money is nothing but a number is not necessarily a problem, so long as we are clear that money itself has no intrinsic value and structure the money creation process to facilitate beneficial exchanges that build the real wealth of individuals, families, communities, and nature. The fact that money is only a system of accounting entries becomes a serious problem when the economy is managed to make the inflation of financial assets its defining purpose and a few individuals are allowed to game the system to enrich themselves free from the exertions of contributing to the production of real wealth.
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