Why do you need money?

offrey@newsletter.paragraph.com (hugginge) — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 03:30:31 GMT

On this day, you wake up and find that you have traveled back in time to the ancient era of barter. In this day and age, there is no concept of money, and every transaction between people depends on what the other person is willing to give up for what they want. In order to survive, you have to join this ancient and primitive exchange game, but fortunately God has been kind to you, not leaving you with four walls, giving you the identity of a chicken farmer. But you only love fish, so you want to find a fisherman and trade a chicken for a fish. You have gone through hardships and dangers, searched for ninety-nine eighty-one fishermen, and finally found a fisherman who is willing to exchange with you. A barter deal was completed. You find that because there is no standardized medium of exchange, you have to wait until both parties to the transaction have what the other wants before you can make a fair deal. This double coincidence is hard to come by. The next day, you follow the cat and the tiger, find the fisherman again, and exchange fish with him to eat, but the fisherman tells you that he doesn't want to eat chickens today, and seeing that the deal is about to fail, you say to the fisherman for the sake of appetite, why don't I give you two chickens and exchange you for a fish? The fisherman's eyes rolled and he gladly agreed. And after you satisfy your cravings, you will inevitably have a feeling of being deceived. You find that since there is no pricing standard, the value of the goods is Schrödinger's. Maybe today a fish can be exchanged for a chicken, and tomorrow it will become a basket of fish for a chicken. And when only one party has a request from the other, either the transaction fails, or the party with the other party has to compromise and engage in an unfair transaction. In addition to this, you also find that some people will never be able to achieve the goal of storing wealth. Your neighbor is a fruit farmer who needs to sow seeds, water them, protect seedlings, and remove insects before the fruit is ripe. Like you raise chickens, you work hard all year round, but barter is only possible in a world where the fruit is ripe, and the fruit will rot, and the fruit will rot, and the wealth will disappear. It's impossible for you, as a traverser, to be indifferent to this. So you come up with a way for the inhabitants, which is to replace whatever you have in your hands with the most common things that are easy to store and that everyone wants, such as rice, salt, hides, etc. Residents can then exchange these necessities for other items they want, without worrying about what they have rotting in their hands or not what someone else wants. When the group agrees that two bowls of rice and a spoonful of salt can be exchanged for a fish, it is difficult for the fisherman to overturn the approval and ask you for more chickens. When the farmer also has rice and salt that can be easily stored, there is no need to worry about running out of things at other times. At this time, with your efforts, rice, salt, and animal skins have the attributes of money in a certain sense, and have become a medium of exchange, a pricing standard, and a means of storing wealth.

Offrey

Why do you need money?