A world without money ?
The worship of ‘Juno Moneta’ the protector of funds in 413 .
When people originally wanted to exchange goods and services, without just taking them, they would have used some form of basic bartering systems.
Bartering has several problems, most notably that it requires a “coincidence of wants”.
The first forms of money, obviously, would have been coins of some sort.
In Lydia in approximately 600 B.C., in what is modern Turkey, Lydia’s King Alyattes minted the first official currency from electrum, a mixture of silver and gold
Lydia’s currency helped the country increase both its internal and external trade, making it one of the richest empires in Asia Minor.
The coin illustrated above is a Lydian third stater, or trite,minted sometime around 600 BC in Lydia, Asia Minor (current-day Turkey), a country in close geographic and cultural proximity to the Greek colonies in Asia Minor.
The chinese, who invented paper, naturally enough invented the first forms of paper money.They had a head start of about seven centuries over the west.
Marco polo even wrote “..It is in the city of Khanbalik that the Great Khan possesses his Mint. In fact, paper money is made there from the sapwood of the mulberry tree, whose leaves feed the silk worm. The sapwood, between the bark and the heart, is extracted, ground and then mixed with glue and compressed into sheets similar to cotton paper sheets, but completely black…”
And when polo discussed his observations of the use of notes for payment,of services and goods, many did not believe him.
Bills of exchange became prevalent with the expansion of European trade toward the end of the Middle Ages.
This then segued into the issuing of paper currencies use by colonial governments in North America who used a system of IOU`s that traded as currency.
Banks and the ruling classes started buying currencies from other nations and created the first currency market.
Could we actually survive without money.?
Its a Utopian idea that has been promoted by the likes of Engels, Marx,some religious fundamentalists (the love of it is the root of all evil) as well many from the hippy movement.
Even as recently as the 1970`s the Socialist Standard claimed that “..money will disappear, gold can be reserved in accordance with Leni`s wish, for the construction of public toilets..In communist societies goods will be freely available and free of charge.The organisation of society to its very foundation will be without money..the frantic and neurotic desire to consume and hoard will disappear”.
I am guessing the Socialist Standard used to sell their newsletters.. 🙂
My point was that no communist state has ever managed to dispense with money.
A brief glance at a hunter gather group like the Piripkura who wandered out of the jungle in Columbia recently has shown itself happy to exchange an arduous traditional life in their jungle homelands for a subsistence existence based on government handouts at the periphery of a globalized world of finance.
They also had no concept of the future which was intriguing.
Many new agers have a romantic misconception of hunter gathers and don`t realise how dangerous it is, to live that sort of life.
The Jivaro of Ecquador lose nearly sixty percent of male deaths due to violence.
Which brings to mind the quote by Thomas Hobbes “The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
And now we have mobile payments through electronic devices like smart phones as well as online banking using the net which was based on the amazing jumps in computational power.
And then the latest versions of money which is virtually currency.
The most famous being bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009.
It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin balances are kept using public and private “keys,” which are long strings of numbers and letters linked through the mathematical encryption algorithm that was used to create them.
Like all articles produced by Ample Property Solutions, this topic has a purpose.
Mankind has come out of the dark ages with the use of money in all its forms.
It has enriched our lives immensely.
We believe the best way to increase our supply of money (capital) is by investment.
And the safest form of investment in Australia, for long term wealth creation is still property.
Nothing beats it.
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