The Purpose of Money

 

There's a post making the rounds on social media to the effect of complaining that we live in a capitalist society when what would be much better is if we simply did things to take care of each other. Though I am pretty extreme on the "cold-blooded capitalist" continuum, I acknowledge capitalism has its flaws, and it is a legit exercise by citizens and governments alike to figure out how best to manage the economy, avoid massive inequality, and protect our most vulnerable.

But, lack of awareness of how a capitalist system actually works makes such discussions hard to have in constructive ways. Take money for example. It is absolutely true, literally in the Bible, that money is fraught, and that excessive money can ruin people. But money as a form of exchange is quite literally one of the great human inventions of all time.

Bartering, even at a very small scale, while fun and cozy, is incredibly inefficient, in ways that leave all of us poorer in time and money. There is nothing in our lives that wouldn't become incredibly difficult absent the concept of currency as a form of holding value. 

Let's say I want to make bacon and eggs for breakfast for my kids. All of the ingredients and supplies for this simple task will need to be obtained from people who produce them, in exchange for something of equal value that I can offer them. And we have to consummate that trade in real time. That's an awful lot of energy expended just to take money out of the equation.

You might argue, well we can just owe each other, or even better let's forget about keeping accounts and simply freely offer what we make to others. The former is literally what money does - I pay you for your eggs so that instead of something I give you in return I give you something that has inherent value that you can then use for something you need later. The latter, well, this is something that friends and family can do, so if you want to live in a society that is at such a micro scale that you only deal with people at that level of intimacy then go on ahead, but the rest of us interact with hundreds of strangers daily and millions of others who touch something that touches our lives.

We can argue about whether capitalism inherently exploits workers, ruins the environment, and concentrates resources in an unjust way. That is absolutely a good debate to sink our collective teeth into. But let's not be too far away from just how essential certain components of capitalism are to the healthy functioning of our daily lives.