Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
Money is fiction and always has been. It's just a fiction that we all choose to believe in because it's convenient:

Yap Island Rai Stones

All other money is like that, too. Consider gold, which has been used as a form of currency in much of the world for much of history: It's essentially a heavy, mostly useless, soft, metal. Why does it have value? Because people agreed that it had value. If you have an ounce of gold, you might be able to exchange it for $2000 US dollars today, and you might have only be able to exchange it for $1000 US dollars a year ago. Did it double in size? No, it didn't. Were 10 extra 100 dollar bills printed specifically for this trade? No, they weren't. Somebody just agreed to give you more money. The money doesn't even have to exist, aside from being a few bits in a computer somewhere.

Money is a means to exchange value. It doesn't have to exist, it doesn't have to be meaningful, it just has to be agreed upon.
That's why I've always wondered about these types that "hoard" gold "for when society collapses" because I wouldn't see gold as having much value... I mean... ok, you got a gold coin that weight 4ounces with an eagle stamped on it. Great... what good does that do? I can't eat it. I can't cook with it. But a chicken... now we're talking. That's something that has value. You can make a meal out of it. You can make stock out of it. It can lay eggs, another food source... chickens will be the REAL currency of the next apocalypse... BAKAAAW


-tg