The Crash Course, Revised Edition

CHAPTER 9Our Money System

Before we begin our tour through the economy, energy, and the environment, it's important that we build a common understanding of this thing we call “money.”

Money is something we live with so intimately on a daily basis that it has probably escaped our close attention, much like the distinction between growth and prosperity.

Initially what gave money its start were agricultural surpluses that represented real, tangible wealth that could be stored for relatively long periods of time. Over time, people learned it was far easier to convert stores of food into units of money, which could be exchanged for a wide variety of other goods and services, than it was to barter directly using grain.

Money, of course, is an essential feature of our lives. People in practically every culture ever studied, in every region of the world, even those locked down in supermax prisons, have invented and used some form of money, indicating without a doubt that it is a very common attribute of civilization. Religion and money share that in common. Were all of our paper and electronic currency to disappear, a new form of money would rapidly and necessarily arise to take its place. Humans and money are intertwined. If a group of humans stripped of everything were to colonize a deserted island, sooner or later they'd settle on something to be their “money.”

By way of example, in U.S. federal correctional facilities, prisoners used to pay each other with “money” in the form of ...