Money seems to present stark contradictions and paradoxical consequences for man. On the one hand money, in theory, represents a perceived value at a distance, is a symbolic representation of some existent thing which has value to someone. Thus money can operate as a neutral medium of exchange, freeing us from the need to barter item for item - it can allow for a “perfect” (as perfect as possible) common standard of comparative value among things, which is always fluid and changing but represents the best possible assignation of relative value of things within a group of people.
On the other hand, money has a power all its own, one that leads us to do things we otherwise would not. The desire for money can consume us at the expense of all other values in our lives. Money can also be used as power over others, he who has a lot of money can dominate he who does not, through various means and within any economic system that exists or has existed. Money is thus inevitably a tool of enslavement and control, and seems to remain at the heart of systems which seek and establish forms of domination over man (the appropriation and control of money has been vital for tyrannical regimes and dictators throughout history, because as we all know, money is power).
Money also distances us from the thing in question which it is supposed to represent, the real worth or created value of a physical thing. This distancing becomes even more problematic when we consider debt, interest, stocks and bonds. These functions of money tend to withdraw the real existent worth behind money further and further, and money takes on a meaning of its own, an inherent value disconnected from any real thing in physical reality. Thus money becomes valuable precisely and only because we act like it is valuable.
And yet you cannot eat money, you cannot build a house of it, it will not keep you warm in a fire for long. . . in short money has no inherent value in terms of any real physical limitation or condition of our existence, except for the imaginary value we give it that allows us to trade it ultimately for goods and services that are of real physical value to us.
But could we live in a society without money? How would this be possible, absent a simple barter system? It seems like money is necessary in some form for a common system of exchange. . . but when money distances itself more and more from a real thing of value it tends to lose this advantage because the relative value of real things cannot be assessed via money – if money is distant from real tangible values (goods, services, products, things) then it ceases to be an accurate arbitor of the relative value of these things to each other.
Money seems both necessary as well as at the heart of so many ills and problems with the world. Is there a “solution” to the problem of money? Is it necessay, or could we conceive of a practical economy without money?
Perhaps a society in which all products and needs or desires can be made relatively cheaply and plentifully, there would be no need for money, sort of like in the world of Star Trek. A huge potential surplus would need to exist of all valuable things in life for this to work, it seems, else the economy would reduce itself to bartering. So perhaps technological advancement is the key to ridding ourselves of money?