The History of Money

Money was and still is today, people perceived to be very important in life. Money can buy you food, shelter, cloths, cars and many indulgences in life. Without money, it is very difficult to survive in the modern complex society we living in. But, the truth is money is nothing more than a temporary representative value to serve as a medium of exchange. By tomorrow, the value can be gone to nothing. How is that? First we need to understand what is money.

Come to understand the money, history serve us well. It goes back to the stone ages when system barter were prevalence. As human are born to have an intelligent minds, our great great great ancestor come to understand it is so difficult to trade by commodities to commodities. Then one day, precious and rare shell, stone and metal are being introduced to replace the system barter. Precious metal such as silver and gold became the currency or money during the time, and it does improve the trading efficiency. Then come along economy growth; villages become towns;towns become cities; cities become nations. The society become complex and population is growing. The leaders and thinkers during that time started to perceive the lacking of previous metal (god made's money) to accommodate the trade that are growing exponentially. Additional of that, there been many incident for inter continent traders who always afraid to be robbed by carrying the precious metal around. Government then introduced paper money which representing the gold and silver in storage. With such system, the people can store their gold and silver in a safer place said Egypt or Italy; and by bringing the piece of paper that representing storage to trade across countries. Then he who get the paper can anytime, by means to collect the gold and silver with such piece of paper. So, then paper money is introduced. Then years goes by, civilization become even more complex, with government and financial institution are being so innovative to stimulate economy growth; paper money that backing by hard previous metal are being abused. It is always difficult to resist if you can create wealth out of nothing. There were more paper money being introduced than the actual gold and silver in storage. As speculation goes on and panic set in, government then do something. The milestone is on 1971, under president Nixon; United state proclaimed to abandon gold standard and therefore paper money are no longer exchangeable to gold nor silver. The paper currency are now being backed by government itself. If the government is strong, politically stable, the currency is strong vice versa. It is what we known today fiat currency system. In fiat currency system, the government will dictate the value of paper money you holding or perhaps including electronic booked figure you having in your bank account. The system is adopted globally as it make all government to be able to print as much money as they wish as long as people are believe in the government. Therefore, the money we come to perceived as very valuable today is nothing but a imagination value that government make us to believe. It is a vehicle that enable the authorities to steal of us without really need to take it from us. How? They simply print more... Wiemar republic of Germany during 1910s is the well depicted anecdote to explain it.

So, having a lot of money does not mean you are rich nor safe. Instead, knowing how to use the money, and how it will create real value in life is more important. By turning the other side of coins, we not really want the money, we want the house that money can buy or the car that money can buy. Money is just nothing but a piece of paper. There is no intrinsic value in it. Therefore, if we could understand the truth of money, we will be unattached to money, which enable us to be more daring in life to create what really matter to us. Unattached to money make us do not afraid of losing it. Unattached to money make us be able to pursue our dream.