Here is the *Cliff Notes* introduction to Money <https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/economics/money-and-banking/functions-of-money> .
Money is often defined in terms of the three functions or services. Money serves as a medium of exchange, as a store of value, and as a unit of account. Money's most important function is as a *medium of exchange* to facilitate transactions. Without money, all transactions would have to be conducted by barter, which involves direct exchange of one good or service for another. The difficulty with a barter system is that in order to obtain a particular good or service from a supplier, one has to possess a good or service of equal value, which the supplier also desires. In other words, in a barter system, exchange can take place *only* if there is a double coincidence of wants between two transacting parties. The likelihood of a double coincidence of wants, however, is small and makes the exchange of goods and services rather difficult. Money effectively eliminates the double coincidence of wants problem by serving as a medium of exchange that is accepted in all transactions, by all parties, regardless of whether they desire each others' goods and services. As a medium of exchange, I think of money as something like a ruler. You can use it to measure things, to compare the measurements, and to exchange things for tokens of units of such measurements. Certainly, such a measurement is not a complete description of the thing measured. Is claiming that a measurement of a thing is equivalent to the thing itself what you are referring to as reduction? I doubt that anyone would take that position. So if you are arguing against that, I think it is something of a red herring. No one seriously takes such a position. Still, money is extraordinarily useful for facilitating exchanges that would be very difficult to arrange otherwise. Of course, if it's a complicated exchange one generally needs more than a ruler. That's why we have contracts, laws, etc., to spell out the additional details. I certainly agree with you about that. But I still don't see how a complex society can get along without something like a money-like ruler as a way to establish basic comparisons as at least the starting points of many if not most exchanges. -- Russ Abbott Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 9:21 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected]> wrote: > Using wooden chits *and* US dollars limits overly reductive conceptions of > money. It's fine to play word games and point out ambiguity in the usage of > the term "money". But it should be clear that, like with languages, having > diverse types of money is less reductive than 1 type of money. I'd no more > want to rid the world of Yen than I'd want to rid the world of, say, Farsi. > Here lie many of our disagreements about hooking one nation's money to > another nation's money. > > Options are contracts. You can trade contracts without money. We do it all > the time with, say, "quit claim" deeds. While the overwhelming majority of > these trades use money, my claim is that money isn't *necessary*. Of > course, it may be effective and efficient. > > This conversation is about the accumulation of capital and UBI as a > band-aid to help maintain a society under the tendency to accumulate > capital. In that larger conversation, reduction to a singular, grand > unified measure like a single money, like USD, washes away the variation in > ways to store value. Storing value in Yuan, as opposed to Euros, actually > means something (at least Putin thinks so). Similarly, storing value in a > .25 acre plot of land with a fairly maintained building on it is different > from storing value in gold. Although they can all be *thought of* as money, > only a capitalist does so. The rest of us think, say, our espresso machine, > is different fundamentally from our pickup truck. > > On 5/10/21 8:22 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: > > As you say, your alternatives are "money writ large." So how does that > eliminate money? It just changes its form. > > > > I don't understand how options further your position. How do you trade > them without something like money? > > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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