We are tool users. There are other animals that use tools, but on a very rudimentary level. When I look at humans and our accomplishment it is that one ability which I see as the thing that truly separates us. Now you may think it is language that separates us, and the written word that allows us to preserve and quickly spread the knowledge that took our predecessors a lot of effort to discover. You would be correct, but language itself is a tool. It is a tool of communication. We expand that tool and add words to define new things, and if you are at all like me you have conversations with yourself in your head, and you have complex thoughts in the form of language inside your mind. My thoughts while they do involve images are dominated by words. Thus, the more words I know and the better grasp of language I have one would hypothesize that the greater and more complex thoughts I would be capable of having.
That is not the scope of this particular post but it is peripherally relevant and is something I like to point out as a tool as well. I also am known for stating that tools can be used for malevolent, or benevolent purposes. The hammer for example while excellent at assisting us in construction, breaking, etc is also quite effective as a weapon.
This is true of words as well. They can be used to help, or to harm. Though unlike most tools words happen in the mind, so if we work at it we can make it so any harm from words is virtually non-existent.
The goal of this post was to talk about Currency (aka Money). It is at times called "The Root of All Evil".
What is it?
Without it I need to take my 10, 100, 1000 Chickens somewhere and say "I'll give you X Chickens for Y pieces of clothing", and the X and Y is a voluntary transaction between trading partners. That works, but it does not scale well. The larger quantity of things, and the size of things makes it increasingly difficult to trade this way. It can still be done, but it is very slow. This tool was created as a universal means of exchange. It is a representation of value. It is very portable, and it enabled the exchange of pretty much anything often without needing to port the large quantities around beforehand. It also has the nice side effect of being able to assist in near instantaneous changes to supply due to unforeseen events. It can be used to adapt to supply and demand almost immediately. These things we have not found another tool or method that can replicate. Central Planners are still human, and their predictions while potentially accurate can require a lot of time to recalculate when an unforeseen event occurs. Though the complexities of components, workers, process, etc are far beyond what central planners can keep up with realistically anyway even if they use an army of computers. Something would need to be feeding constant input for any predictions to truly come close to the abilities provided by the tool currency. That input may still be too slow.
I do not consider money the root of all evil. For me the root of all evil is when one person decided it would be a good thing if they controlled another. The application of force. That predates any currency, and it occurs within the mind. It is then expressed in reality in many different ways. Can money be evil? No. Though it can be USED for evil just like the hammer can be used to bash in someone's skull.
I had the seeds of a thought that have not completely finished growing in my mind that inspired me to write this post.
In the past currency has been things like beads, shells, gold, silver, etc. Sometimes nations would stamp or emboss the metals with their mark, but generally the currency would have value simply due to the precious metal having value. Why did the precious metal have value? We decided it did. Some people may state it is due to the effort to produce it and its scarcity that defined its value. These can contribute, but the inverse is also true. Deciding it had value inspired us to the effort of getting/making more.
So far all of this is rather ordinary thoughts for me.
The mental seed today was to ponder paper currencies, credit cards, etc. They decoupled from the system of the past. Unless a trader wants it they are no longer made from something that can be melted down our have value even if it is embossed with the mark of another nation.
Now we have these currencies printed on paper by in the past Nations, but now by private banking establishments that are multi-national, and are not part of the governments, though they have enormous influence (even control) of the global nations. They are not a currency that can be melted down, and in the digital age with the presence of credit cards they no longer even need to physically exist.
Yet, they are not a universal form of exchange.
A Dollar is not a Yuan is not a Euro, etc.
Why?
My thoughts are control. These private bankers can use this to a degree to enforce and push tribalism. They can manipulate interest rates, supply of the currencies, etc to make it so they can profit and control from the changing differences in exchange value between these currencies that they control.
Who decides how much of these forms of currencies there are?
They do. Those private bankers.
They create them out of thin air, and charge the nations interest for this thing they created out of nowhere. They get paid vast amounts of interest for this imaginary concept that they ALLOW the nations to treat as real. As long as people accept them as real they are. As long as people decide they have value they do.
Why don't we have a single universal currency of this form? I suspect there are several reasons. By having several they can bamboozle those who represent the governments into thinking the governments control the currencies. With so many currencies it is a little more difficult to see what they are doing. If they had a single cup with a ball under it on the table that they slid around that is a lot easier to watch and notice than if they have a single ball, and two cups, then three, then a dozen. If we had a single currency of this kind that would be a lot like having a single cup. Their actions and how insane some of the things that occur are would be more noticeable.
A second reason is what I said before, by having more than one they can play these currencies off against each other and make exchanges and wealth between converting from one to the other and even predicting the rise and falls since they are manipulating and creating it. This particular technique would not work with a single currency. It needs at least two, but as with the cup game above the more cups in play the more difficult it is for people to notice what is actually going on.
A third reason is to fuel tribalism. So much of the strife and conflict in the world is driven by the fact that one nation's currency is at a time so much more valuable than another nation's. Yet those nations did not bring their currency into existence. It is the private central bankers that drive this process. A place like the Federal Reserve in the United States that was created in 1913 and took over the currency of the United States and though it has the word "Federal" in it, it is actually not part of the government at all but was owned by banking families. The income tax (highly unconstitutional at the time) was also created in 1913. In that year, at these events you might find one of the roots of evil. A grand plan to CONTROL, and to FORCE.
The unformed seed that has sprouted and is still growing in my mind is the juggle of the interchange between the multiple currencies. Rather than focusing on the currency. Today I found myself pondering why we have multiple currencies when they are created on a whim by these banking families out of air.
This could be why they dislike crypto too. Though do they really? A lot of the cup game shenanigans can also occur within crypto due to the vast amounts of different cryptos being invented, and pushed. Most familiar with cryptos know the term "Pump and Dump" because in the crypto world these things happen fast and frequently. I'd argue that this is a strong reason for the non-crypto currencies to exist as more than one currency as well. It allows these bankers to pump and dump, but it isn't as readily obvious to the public. The public does not tend to monitor how much a Dollar is worth compared to a Peso on a day by day, hour by hour basis. There are people that do, but it does take a little more effort and is not as in your face as the crypto world.
Do we want a single currency?
Do we want one to win?
I don't know yet. I am still thinking about that. One thing I do know is allowing these banking families to print and control it was never a good idea for anyone but them.
