ECONOMY: The Illusion of Money and Currency

Tell a lie a thousand times, and it becomes the truth.

Where is the truth in that statement? Its the understanding,
that if enough people were to hear the same falsehood, and
accept it whole heartedly as the truth, then regardless of any
facts, concrete evidence, or the ridiculousness of the belief, it
would still remain the reality for that group of people.
So what happens if you tell a lie seventy seven point six
trillion times?
It becomes a reality.
It becomes a field of study.
It becomes a pillar of the worlds society.
It is the most wide spread illusion man has ever created, one
of our greatest inventions. It was designed to liberate us, but we
have become its slaves.
That number is the nominal GDP of the world, and the
creation I speak of, is money.
Now, when you envision early human civilizations, it is a
commonly held view that their economies were barter economies.
That is to say, their people depended on trade without money. For
example, if I was a farmer, and you were a carpenter, I would
agree to give you a certain amount of wheat in exchange for
crafting a table.
However this idea of the way things were is not accurate.
The truth is that there is no recorded example of an established
human society that had a functioning barter system. As soon as a
sufficient level of society was created, monetary exchange has
existed with it.
Ancient types of currency took many forms. Cattle, shells,
salt. Later on precious metals were used. Now these forms of
currency had to reach certain criterias to be used. They had to
able to be given in units, individual sections, they had to be
durable and they had to be given in viable quantities to be used
as such. And the last but not least, they had to be accepted as a
medium of exchange.
This meant that to be used to represent money, an object
had to be imbued with the belief that it had value beyond its
actual worth. This is the most important factor. In fact, this belief
of worth doesnt even require a currency to be transmitted.
Money in this day and age no longer even needs to be physically
represented. Every day, institutions receive, buy, sell, trade,
invest, exchange, and donate without any actual physical
interchange, only the shifting of digital numbers.
Both money and the currencies that represent it only exist
because of a need of humankind. Their value and their power
exist solely because enough people believe that they do. These
are man-made structures, without the tetherings of natural laws.
Without that belief, they cease to hold any significance at all.
If for example, the entire world was simply to decide that the
Malaysian Ringgit was no longer a real currency, this medium of
exchange would suddenly cease to be. Malaysia would be forced
to adopt or create a currency that was acceptable and while that
process was taking place, trade would halt, the economy would
crash. It would be chaos.
You open your wallet, or your bank account, and you see
objects or numbers that if accumulated to a sufficient degree can
be used to attain every material thing you could ever desire. But
their worth is part of the grand illusion we have all agreed to take
part in. They represent a belief system which is so integrated and
prevalent that we do not even realize we are subscribed to it.
And such is the fragility of human society. Our economies,
our financial sectors, our livelihoods are contingent upon a fiction
that we choose to believe. We go to war for it. We seek it, we
bleed for it, we live, breathe and die for it.
The nature of money and currencies as they are right now
have to evolve, and keep evolving until we find models that are
conducive to a human condition where greed and hoarding can no
longer cause turbulence and division within society. To do that we
need to realize that money is not a natural force, or a phenomena
that is set in stone. What it is, how it is applied and its use is a
system that is created by human minds, for human kind, backed
by human belief.