AOM1

In considering the relation between people and money, one part of our class discussion stuck out to me as a lense through which to analyze the two. That part was our talk about whether the United States could survive without money. What struck me was how difficult I found it to imagine what it would even mean for us not to have money. It seemed to me that if paper money were to disappear, we'd likely all start to inventory our resources and marketable skills, and then start trading around, at first on a small scale but quickly thanks to the internet on a larger level. Of course there would be a shock to deal with in various systems if money were to suddenly cease to be, but I think we'd naturally fall back into making exchanges. And then I can't imagine it would be long before somebody wants to trade something but doesn't have their side just ready yet, so they write an IOU note. And then as IOU notes become popular, its decided people ought to be compensated for the risk of accepting goods or services in the future rather than present, and that some source of power ought to enforce promises. It seems to me in the absence of money, we'd just invent it again. I considered that perhaps that's because I didn't go far enough. If someone owns a deed to a house, for example, that may not be traditional currency, but it is a transferrable declaration of ownership, so I suppose it should be considered money too. And in fact if anything can be traded, all property itself must be considered money in a roundabout sense. Again I face the issue though that if all claims to property were suddenly made void, after an initial probably violent scramble to lay claims, people would start to defend what they could get their hands on, enforcing anti-theft laws, and soon we'd be back where we started. It seems to me that the trouble in considering human society without a money system is that it will eventually naturally create a new one. Even considering the Incas and their labor economy, one might imagine that as their society grew, it would be necessary to keep track of who did their work, perhaps with certificates that could be handed to people by an authority as proof they did their work and then exchanged for resources, perhaps later on digitized, just a record of who has done how much work and how many resources they have used. Humans must relate to money because we form societies, which are fundamentally about exchange, and when broken down to their core I think it's fair to say that all exchanges are, in a sense, a transfer of money.