>>55220741
It just acts as a simple non-discriminant intermediary between trading goods and services.

>>55220817
What determines the value of a piece of paper?

>>55220911
Jews

>>55220741
Money is debt, if you have money you are owed goods or services. It's the same principle as someone owing you 5 sheep or their equivalent in grain(bartering) except it applies to all people who use the currency, not just the person who owes you the good/service. It essentially makes of barter a social entity, and necessitates a mediating factor. It arises in all sufficiently complex social environments.

Giving someone else money is giving them a right to draw debt from others.

I recommend Caroll Quigley for a fascinating account of the role of money in civilization in general and in modern Western civilization specifically.

Trudeux? Is that you?

>>55220911
The piece of paper can be thought of as something similar to a stock in a company. The value of all goods in the economy are pegged to this note, and that's what gives it value. The fact that the notes are backed up by the rule and law of a supreme government force gives faith that the note will still have value at a future date.

>>55220741
so the government can tax us

Money came from specialization. Once people started making different things, and specializing in making only one thing, it was hard to find someone to trade with, because they had to want what you had and you had to want what they had. A universal good was established, and that good is money.

>>55221060
From what i've heard, the barter origin of money is a myth.

>>55221242
Maybe in part, my guess is that things like precious metals would have been treated just like any tradable good, however it's properties make it the most ideal material to trade with and in time it just became the de facto money.

>>55221242
Bartering is not the origin of money, I was just using it to explain what money is by examining the notion of being owed in barter, and extending to a universal owing, which is money. How money arose is about as inscrutable as how civilization, technology, or the state arose. These are questions for philosophy, as science can't explain things that happen only particularly.

>>55220911
the amount of pieces of paper, and the amount of goods and services that can be bought with said pieces of paper

The only real currency of true value any living being in this Creation has is Time.

Everything else is just laughable.

Right as rain, the establishment rushed out with a shitty derogatory sci-fi movie to slander the concept.

>>55221534
Interesting, i've never taught about time in that way.

>>55220741

Because there are better things you could be using like energy credits

>>55221534
To build on your first statement in order to make it more simple for OP, currency is, as others have said, a simplification of goods for other goods. It's a middle-ground for the trading of goods. If someone wants 5 sheep for 5 ox, but you don't have 5 ox, you could offer them 5 fuckbucks to buy 5 ox with in exchange for their 5 sheep, the other satisfied in trusting they can then take that to exchange for 5 sheep.

Currency is the middle man that can turn time and effort into bartered goods, and that's a big thing.

>>55220741
A good middleware to use for trading, otherwise it's just a piece of fancy paper backed by the government.