money is simple and best explained with its actual origin (at least for one culture). Someone wanted to bring his livestock to market and found it a great deal of trouble to move the animals back and forth with no guarantee of selling them. So, he found others who felt the same and they devised a method to make the process more efficient. They made small shapes from clay and assigned them a numerical value, using the value of the animals as a base. They would bring these shapes to the market and buy or sell with the shapes as place markers for transactions, forcing them to only move their animals between their properties. In order to stash these markers, one of them devised the idea of wrapping it in soft clay, a convenient means of temporary storage. When the clay was later unwrapped, the inside had marks from the clay shapes (circles, crescents, etc.). The group realized that maintaining stationary tablets upon which they could record the markers would save them the trouble of carrying the accumulating clay shapes. So they marked numbers (via the symbols made by the shapes) on a series of tablets located at a central point of trade. These numbers would represent the animals and later other items traded. Thus the idea of money.

I think of it as less illusory than symbolic, but I would be lying if I said it has not grown into an illusory something for many.

Edit: banned because wiki has a good one liner for it. And it does make a difference if money is commodity or fiat. Forgot about that.

Well, let me say a few things:

1. Like Ryat said, money is Legal Tender. Many people have no idea what this means, so let me explain it.

When money first appeared, it was meant as a trading item, because people had trouble carrying gold or silver, or whatever valuable metal they wanted to trade for goods. So people made coins, that were basically gold or silver (mostly gold), that was molded into round objects, that were kind of easier to carry, as well as they all had the same size, so there was no reason to measure their weight and such.

But as humanity progressed, and nations formed, laws had to be applied, because people could mix gold with other metals, or do all kinds of things to cheat the system. So they officially made money, that were in gold or silver coins, that were made by the kings, or emperors, or Pharaoh etc etc

Soon, as the first traces of a real life economy appeared, criminals started to take action, and steal, some people would sell or trade goods and become rich, so for many reasons, some people wanted a place where they can safely keep their gold, without having to carry it with them all the time, or keep it at their homes, where there was danger of getting robbed.

So the first bankers started to appear, and at first, they just offered to keep people's money into their safely guarded vaults, for some small % of their gold in exchange.

These bankers were not related with the government, or anyone in power. They were just businessmen wanting to make some profit.

Well the bankers soon realized, that they were not making much from their business, so they came up with a smart plan. They noticed that most people, didnt withdraw large amounts of money, and most of their deposits were kept there, probably being their savings. So they started giving paper notes to some people, that were like small contracts, that the banker would owe the client the amount of money they wanted to withdraw. Basically a tender note that had the same value in gold coins as the number written on it by the banker.

The bankers knew that they could do that without having to give the customers any real money, because there was no chance that they would all come to the bank to withdraw all of their deposits. Plus, the client that wanted to withdraw money from their deposits, would just give the tender note to someone else to buy goods, and that person to someone else, and so on so forth.

Later these tender notes from the bankers became legal by the governments, and the first paper money appeared.

However, money always represented some valuable goods, which meant that it could be exchanged for actually gold or silver, at any time the owner wanted to. So any person could go to the bank at any time, and exchange the tender note from the bank for gold or silver. Money actually had real value in the world.

However, today this isnt the case. Money now, holds no power or value whatsoever.

This is a 1 US dollar legal tender note (year 1928 I think).

This is a 2003 US 1-dollar legal tender note:

Please note the difference between the 2, the first being a "United States Note" and the second being a "Federal Reserve Note".

The first stating above the "ONE DOLLAR" mark, that it "WILL PAY TO THE DEALER ON DEMAND", which meant that you could get actual gold or silver coins (not sure what the US used back then) in exchange for that note from the bank, and the second not stating anything, which means that you cant really get anything of value for these notes.

This was just an example. There is a lot more to the story, which I am not going to write atm, for obvious reasons.

This whole history lesson (kind of) I am making here, is really the most innocent part of the monetary system. Because once the real bankers came in, and changed everything, then things started getting very different.

1 thing is for sure. Money doesnt have ANY value whatsoever. Because money is debt. And debt is money.

Money is being created out of thin air, and is being traded for actual goods and services. Which ultimately means that this whole monetary system were are preserving is a big scam, and we are all victims of it. WILLINGLY. Oh yeah!

For ANYONE, who might be slightly interested, and wants to learn some very basic things about money, watch the Money Masters in youtube.

Besides that, 1 more video I find enlightening, is the Zeitgeist Addendum: the movie, which can be found on Google Videos.

But really, all these videos are just slightly scratching the surface. If you do some deep research you can find a lot more interesting info, and definitely a lot more dirt and FILTH, in our well-preserved monetary system.

P.S. You may disagree with the whole Zeitgeist movement, and most things they say at the Zeitgeist movie, but really, it doesnt matter. All I talked about was just about the monetary system, and if you dont care about anything else, then just watch the first.....10-15 mins (I think) of the Zeitgeist move.

P.P.S. Please dont start telling me that all these things about the Federal Reserve system is crap, and that money isnt created out of thin air. I wont even bother answering.

/end of really long post, sorry about that.

"Cute Pokemon always get Parahax!"

banned for excessive pontification about money

money is an illusion, enough said

banned for thinking that man can be so easily fooled

next you will be telling us the companies going "green" are merely playing word games to look good

banned for wanting people to open their eyes and not rely on the "I'm not smart enough" excuse

banned for I want to use it to take over the world

Banned because he just doesn't realize that the world already belongs to me.

Banned for US dollar are still compared to gold.

banned monetary oratory

banned for assuming that is normal

banned for wanting a larger cross-section

that means more data to think about and compute, makes my head hurt

Banned because Cyprus has some kind of missile that has a launch signal identical to the signal used by a remote-controlled sex toy.