The point has regrettably long since been missed that the real function of money was to make bartering or the exchange of goods or labour much easier.
For instance, when there was no money: if a fisherman had fish spare but wanted his horses saddle repaired, he might have to exchange the fish for bread with the baker, the bread with the butcher for meat, and then the meat with the saddler for the time and materials from the Saddler – who might have gone through a similarly convoluted route to secure whatever he needed to live, but also to work.
Like the goods used in this example, labour, skills and the experience that each of us has are also a commodity which have value for others.
It is only because our experience tells us that it’s the money that we receive for providing our labour, skills and experience to others that holds the real value, that we have accepted the way that prices escalate at rates that others decide.
In a period of massive change, when everything that we know or take for granted has stopped, and the great correction is underway, one of the key areas of change will be our relationship with money and the way we pay for the things that we need – and if we are able, that we want.
The refocusing on local production and localism in its truest sense that we will have to embrace will enable a much healthier relationship with money to exist. One where money will be seen again as the unit of exchange that it is, rather than the must-have or endgame in everything that it has sadly become.
Adam Tugwell 