Money: A Story of Humanity

The rate of interest isn’t merely a price; it is also a code, a mini-encyclopaedia of information about the person we are lending to, the chances of success, the risk in the region, the competition in the market, the technological infrastructure, and a whole host of other variables.

Money is a force that dictates the flow of people, goods and ideas around the globe. Our efforts and talents are assessed by it; so too is the future.

Each of us has heard the mantra that money is the root of all evil, yet money is also an instrument of peace. Rather than kill their neighbours for food and property, the newly sedentary farming societies learned to trade using money.

With debt came the notion of the value of time, and with this came the concept of the price of money: the rate of interest.

In contrast, the bottom-up economy is organic. It’s an evolutionary system of trial and error, where the market, based on prices, preferences and scarcity, organises the economy and society. Prices and profits, rather than plans and priests, determine whether something is working. People involve themselves in the bottom-up economy willingly, rather

In the tabernacle of the human mind, the coin works as a short cut, denoting the value of an immense array of real commodities and experiences in one universally understood tiny bit of portable metal.

money is abstract and is only given value as long as the rest of us (or enough of the rest of us) believe in it. Money, like faith, is a product of the human imagination.

Money buys freedom: the essential promise which makes it so attractive is that, armed with money, you can change your world by gaining more control over your life.

This means that the shekel was liquid. Unlike something that was illiquid, such as property, its value was easy to unlock and transfer. It