It is fascinating to think that money is such an important part of our world today. Because money is just an improvised version of barter system.
During the barter system only few human skills were useful - all related to the basic needs of humans. After barter system humans started using commodities to buy or sell various skills, these commodities ranged from precious metals like gold to consumables like wheat. This introduction of commodity money has allowed humans to measure value of a skill in a common denominator, this in turn allowed skills to blossom or I should say explode.
The commodity money has changed to coins that are made of precious metal and endorsed by rules and finally took the form that we know it today. Just like everything else in the world the transformation of money is not going to stop here, there are signs that the electronic currency might be the future.
While currency has solved various problems it has also created numerous new problems. Undue accumulation of wealth is the prime one. Though it looks like this accumulation is getting worse I would like to think otherwise. Just think of the days when rulers had vast amount of wealth and the rest of us just had enough to survive. I am not saying that today's world is much different to that but definitely better even if the improvement is infinitessimally small. Hopefully the situation improves as the time passes by.
Today there are things that we can't yet measure in money, but the list of things that can't be measured is reducing fast and technology is the prime source aiding this reduction. As we keep adding items to the list of things that we can buy with money we keep imagining about new stuff that can't be bought and this goes on.
Having a common measure is good in many ways but being as powerful as it is, it is easy to be abused. Technology should be able to solve this too and I am confident that there will be a day when technology helps level the playing field
One of the effects of money is that it made us very competitive as it, being the arbitrary measure of most things in the world today, has allowed us to measure most of our possessions. As long as this competitiveness is helping us get better, without causing harm to others, it is all well and good but it is becoming more and more common that this competitiveness is turning into ugly battles.
Hope humanity can see a day where no human being suffers for survival. Beyond that a healthy competition is always good for the progression of human race
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