In Richard Davies’ recent article for The New York Times, “The Fiction That Makes the World Go Round,” he reviews the book, Money: The True Story of a Made Up Thing, by Jacob Goldstein. In his article, Davies claims that money has no actual value and that it is all just “an i.o.u. printed on cheap material that promises the holder nothing but more paper money.” Our physical money is just a place holder for the value we all believe it to have. When in reality, it has no more worth than a blank piece of copy paper. Society has just agreed upon the idea that a piece of paper will rule the world, and we all just accepted it. Goldstein had a similar take on the matter as he said “it’s really ‘a made-up thing, a shared fiction. Money is fundamentally, unalterably social.'” These authors can both agree that money was just made up by society as a way to give things a value and to separate people based on how much they have.

References

Davies, R. (2020, September 8). The Fiction That Makes the World Go Round (Published 2020). The New York Times.