Author Richard Davies argues that money is nothing more than something we imagine to have value. In his article, “The Fiction That Makes The World Go Round,” he describes money as “a confidence trick: an i.o.u. printed on cheap material that promises the holder nothing but more paper money.” Davies asserts that money is something we can hold but has no worth beyond the physical piece of material. Similar ideas are shared in Jacob Goldstein’s book, Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. In his book, Goldstein states money is “a made-up thing, a shared fiction. Money is fundamentally, unalterably social.” In the end, we have slowly moved away from the “early chronicles” when we used to use metals or salts as payment into paper currencies that provided another way to exchange services and goods. 

References

Davies, Richard. “The Fiction That Makes the World Go Round.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Sept. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/books/review/money-the-true-story-of-a-made-up-thing-jacob-goldstein.html.