Money. Cash. Loose change. Bills. You and I carry this in our pockets wherever you go. The modern society that you and I live revolves around this object. To be honest, I don’t see money as a necessity for a long life because it does not taste like tender chicken or a passionate kiss of my partner. Nevertheless I often get ridiculed and criticised by everyone around me including my family and those who specialise in commerce, economics, finance and business. Not only would I feel disrespected and alienated by my fellow species, but it intrigues me how our society has matured and complicated the way we maximise our lifetimes on Earth. Everyone around me talks about getting a job just to receive bunches of these printed pieces of paper. That’s why most of my friends advertise offers on social media for tutoring on their best performing subjects to the next generation of secondary students in the following year we complete our high school education. Unlike language, there is no universal currency which seems peculiar. There is the Dollar (USA & Australia), Yuan or Ren Ming Bi (China), New Tai Bi (Taiwan), Yen (Japan), Pound (UK), Euro (Countries in the EU), Roubles (Russia), Ram (South Africa) and Rupees (India). In fact the world we live in is home to over 180 different currencies. I thought a single monetary exchange system would be efficient in terms of calculation and foreign spending by tourists and trade managers. However there seems to be a huge resistance from a majority of the economists and the general public for a monetary currency everyone worldwide would use, according to this report.
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/wp9817.pdf
It seems that different international stock markets have different economic realities and visions. I thought that local currencies also carried a cultural significance to the traditions and values of the country like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt on the US Dollar notes, and the Emu and Peacock on the Australian coins. If the future of economics features a single currency agreed by every nation around the world, for instance, the US Dollar, then every currency that is not that single monetary currency is called “fiat money” meaning they are only useful in collections of flashcards of famous people and symbolistic creatures from different countries. Nevertheless it seems extremely unlikely that money would be removed from existence unless a zombie apocalypse broke out like in Resident Evil or The Walking Dead.
The word “money” originated from a temple of Juno, on Capitoline, which is 1 of Rome’s 7 hills. It comes from the Old French moneie, and from Latin moneta meaning 'mint or money’, which suggested the Roman money was minted in the temple of Juno. The first known use of money came in the form of barter dating back to at least 100,000 years ago. Barter is a system where goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods and services without using a medium of exchange similar to a trade market like 3 piles of grain for a cow. It was often used in times of a monetary crisis when the currency is unstable such as hyperinflation or unavailability for conducting commerce. Around as early a 15,000 BCE, Anatolian obsidian, a raw material for stone-age tools, was distributed with organised trade occurring in the 9th millennium AD. Proceeding to as early as 9000 BCE, both grain and cattle were used in a barter-like method of money exchange. It’s funny to discover that according to Roman law back then, fines had to be paid in oxen and sheep. However bartering was not without its problems, most notably it requires a coincidence of wants. It’s like the Global Trading Station (GTS) in modern Pokemon games where you put out a Pokemon you want to trade and coincidentally someone on the other side of the globe is looking for that Pokemon and spontaneously trades the Pokemon you wish to have in order to fill in your Pokedex. However in the real world, if a wheat farmer needs bananas from a fruit farmer, a direct exchange is somewhat impossible as seasonal fruit would spoil before the grain harvest. What would they do to solve this problem? The solution is to trade the bananas for wheat indirectly through a third, or intermediate, commodity meaning the bananas will be exchanged for an intermediate commodity when it ripens. If the intermediate commodity does not wither and is in demand through the year then it can be exchanged for wheat after the harvest. Today this is known as commodity money, which you carry around in your pockets, wallets or purses.
I feel that we are lectured by our parents, mentors, idols and teachers to think that money is the key to survival in society. They say that to be the fittest in this society, you have to strive for a decent paid salary or putting your name on the world’s rich list. However when I learnt about natural selection, evolution and survival of the fittest in science class, money wasn’t around during the first million years of Earth’s lifetime. As human beings, we were born to think like every other animal species like searching for food, finding shelter to call our temporary home, hunting for live prey whilst competing against other predators to feed ourselves and our respective families, befriend strangers of our own kind and form our own community. So how did money end up on our survival checklist? The fact is no one really knows how the concept of money was invented. As a human being, I thought that food, sex, love and Facebook / Instagram likes was rewarding enough but turns out I can not get my year’s supply of KFC or chocolate-flavoured condoms if I don’t put forward money to the person at the counter. Nowadays we use coins and banknotes as our commodity in exchange for the goods we prefer to get. Because the human population is so large (around 2 billion and counting) and the demand for food and water gradually increases, it suggests that money exists as a means of controlling how much food, water and goods we can consume on a daily basis in order to satisfy a majority of the human population and preserve our neighbouring animal species that may be endangered as natural selection takes its toll. In communist countries money is distributed as a means of equality while in capitalist countries, money is distributed as a means to distinguish people of different social classes. I'll cover this type of issue in another post. Meanwhile, from about 1000 BC money first existed in the shape of knives and spades made from bronze in China during the Zhou Dynasty. They were also cast bronze replicas of cowrie shells in use before coins. The first manufactured coins seemed to have situated in India, China, and in cities around the Aegean Sea between 700 and 500 BC. Some Aegean coins were stamped, heated and hammered with insignia, Indian coins (from the Ganges River Valley) were punched metal disks and Chinese coins (from the Great Plain) were cast bronze with square holes in the centre to be strung together. Copper (Cu), Nickel (Ni), Gold (Au) and Silver (Ag) are the main metal elements of choice when producing coins. These metals are located in Group 11 of the periodic table. They are relatively inert and resistant to corrosion or rust. Their naturally abundant isotopes are not radioactive hence your body won’t age as quickly increasing your chances of developing cancer at an earlier age. These metals are quite soft hence are easily damaged and susceptible to abrasion in daily use as coins. The coins that you carry around are all made of alloys like Copper and Gold, Gold and Silver, sometimes Chromium and Silver (Stainless Steel) to increase its durability, to increase its 3D lattice strength between the bonds of the metal atoms which makes it least likely to become deformed and resistant to wear and tear.
The first known use of paper currency was during the Song Dynasty in China during the 11th century AD but its development began in the 7th century AD during the Tang Dynasty. Merchants and wholesalers there preferred the issue of credit notes over the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. It later spread to the Mongol Empire and then European explorers like Marco Polo and William of Rubruck introduced the same concept in Europe during the 13th century (Yuan Dynasty). Since then the use of banknotes began to spread rapidly through the European countries like Sweden, England and Scotland, and it became increasingly popular by economists across the globe when exchanging large transactions.
Whenever there’s a reward on offer in the form of large sums of cash if you successfully complete a game show challenge, become the last man or woman remaining in a weight loss or cooking competition, I see people’s faces light up when the opportunity to showcase their appearance, journey, passion and talent on television arises. These people seem to find the experience quite rewarding and fun because there are recordings of them stored in the terabytes of storage of particular television channels. However, when money is involved, that fun and excitement is most likely depleted and the hardships of loneliness and begs for mercy may repeat as in a life cycle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w00AFTzIoc
When I watched this documentary “Money Over Matter”, I got curious about why people are so obsessed with accumulating large sums of money. Do you remember the 2008 Wall Street Crash that forced a global economic recession or the Great Depression during the 1930s? It was not the plummeting stocks that got me riled up like those who worked laboriously in front of the screens, angrily hammered the phones, and desperately fingered the keys on that eventful day. It was the outrage, finger-pointing, and panic that erupted amongst every man and woman whilst they helplessly watched the line on the graph travel downwards towards the lowest shares since the Great Depression. It seems the way we were taught how to utilise our money conservatively and wisely influences the way we think too. All of us have this emotional desire for a quick reward or in the long term a guaranteed victory in an auction or competition and the desperate urge to not end up in last place. I feel this is because the experience of losing a close contest is not only heartbreaking and aggravating but also it sets up an impression in front of those around us and we are then known for our misfortunes hence the outcomes would involve consistent taunts and teases which is humiliating and hurtful on our behalf. This may explain Wall Street’s version of the calm before the storm in 1930 and 2008. As competing shareholders seek to collect and deliver stocks at every passing opportunity, the total dow jones will close higher each passing day as the same product is sold for a steadily higher price as it changes hands from person to person. When things seem like heading towards financial paradise, there comes a time when a stakeholder fails to sell the product at a higher price, which triggers a chain reaction of financial losses. In their language, the expanding financial bubble will burst at some stage as it is only a matter of time. Does that mean people are unaware of the emotions that drive us to increase the price on a product we originally bought it for? In 1776, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published his work “The Wealth of Nations” which contained the first modern work of economics. He states that everyone working in economics thinks rationally and our economic system works automatically and, when left with freedom, is able to self-regulate. Would you think the economy and share market is driven human emotion? Well, the daily mundane tasks a Wall Street shareholder would include calculating risks, estimations, odds, and making rational decisions in anticipation of the direction of the stock exchange. I don’t know how and why stocks work or how their countless telephone calls impact on a shareholder's effectiveness in the demanding role they undertake on a daily basis but I’m curious to find out from an expert or two.
When we are thinking rationally, there’s an area of the brain located in the basal forebrain of the pre-optic area of the Hypothalamus called the Nucleus Accumbens. This region is the main regulating centre of our reward system which plays a role in processing rewarding stimuli like food, water, sex and love. It is also highly active in drug addicts, and sex predators too. The Nucleus Accumbens is selectively activated when we perceive pleasant, or emotionally arousing images and during our daydreams of the most pleasant, emotional scenes like romance and intimacy in different popular films and television episodes. Despite money looking pretty innocuous and contrasting to the things that are crucial to our biological survival, it somehow heavily activates the Nucleus Accumbens too. But I don’t seem to understand why this is the case? It might have evolutionary ties to our ancestors’ perception of modern commodities being a necessary reward in order to receive the things we dearly want but that requires significant research and understanding.
Nowadays we all see technology continue to advance and it has become the critical foundation for electronic money transfers like credit cards and bank accounts. There's this new currency called Bitcoin, a virtual currency with no materialistic value outside the cyberspace. I'm still learning about this new currency but I heard that online purchases within the depths of our World Wide Web use this currency because of its simplicity and intractability but that's for another post.
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