Today, most money aren't even in physical circulation. Most of the gold in the world sits in some cold dark vault.
'Gold as money' is still very much in circulation. Even as it sits in CB vaults.
Re:What is money? (1913)
by jsprogrammer on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @01:19AM
(#9536912)
Current fiat monetary systems are not based on 'what the world ow[e]s you'. Money is only a token of a debt an individual or group of individuals has with a legally sanctioned and central bank blessed commercial bank.
At it's core money is merely a concept used to determine deservingness though. It lets us answer the question "does this person deserve X," where X can be providing them services/goods (or not.)
At the moment money is a rather contorted and easily manipulable proxy for deservingness though which is the cause of a lot, if not the majority, of the world's troubles.
There's no technical reason though why we couldn't for example determine deservingness through interpersonal distribution of value; like PageRank but for people.
But my last line still applies to all money.
That's why when someone mentions the phrase "intrinsic value", they are not seeing the core truth of money.
It's interesting that money is misunderstood by so many people while representing the fundamental fabric of human society.
There is no intrinsic value to anything in this universe, not one that applies to every single organism.
For humans and most life forms, the closest thing that I can think of is food/water/(oxygen for aerobic organism), force of violence, pleasure and time.
Today, most money aren't even in physical circulation. Most of the gold in the world sits in some cold dark vault.
It's literally a video game and the funny thing is, we have enough food and water for everyone in the world already.