this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Cybersecurity
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I don't think that's necessarily what that is saying, interesting quote though.
I would argue that money can be basically anything we decide to agree upon as a form of intermediary for goods or services (as opposed to a bartering type of system).
Additionally, governments rise and fall all the time, sometimes they handle monetary/fiscal responsibility well, and sometimes they don't.
I'm not an anarchist by any means so I'm not advocating for lack of government (in fact I'd very likely be considered a communist to most).
If tomorrow the USA IRS said it would accept tax payments via Bitcoin/Eth/Whatever, would that automatically mean that it is in fact money now in your opinion?
I think the key thing here is the myth that money was invented to optimize an unwieldy barter economy. Money isn't actually a tool for ad hoc person-to-person trade, but for trade among members of a community.
And in that setting, it's less about the mechanics of measuring the value of individual items and more about balancing the number of favors owed to/from each member of the community. The magnitude of those favors definitely scale according to the material value of the items flowing through the favors -- but it's a secondary, not primary, concern.
It's true that money can be anything we decide to agree upon, but it's not as a stand-in for valuable goods. It's as a stand-in for "credit against my debt of favors owed".
I'll have to take some time to read and digest this, but you didn't answer my direct question :p