At first, man produced solely for personal consumption. He worked and he created wealth in the form of useful goods and services.

Barter allowed men to exchange goods and services with other producers and allowed specialization of labor.

Money, in the form of precious metals, streamlined and simplified the barter system by introducing a generalized medium of exchange.

Precious metals were replaced by printed currency, which was more convenient, but which unfortunately, could be counterfeited by both criminals, merchants and the state. It is no different than the scrip the mines and factories printed so their employees could buy at the Company Store, and manufactured with pretty much the same motive, to control your economic activity.

Again, for convenience, currency was replaced by IOUs, bank drafts, checks, stocks and bonds, and eventually just account entries. The physical medium of exchange was replaced by a flow of information, which is now done electronically, codified primarily by software.

Information can be copied and transmitted at will; it is totally abstract and ephemeral. It represents only that which we all agree it represents, it has no real existence of its own. Money is to the economy as mathematics is to physics: a useful tool for understanding, but one which has no intrinsic reeality of its own, and which can be turned into a fetish. In fact, fetishism is an economic term, it represents the separation of money from its role as a shorthand for economic activity to a commodity of its own.

Money, which was developed as a means of keeping score, has now been totally removed from the game. Those who control money need not concern themselves any longer with production or consumption, they now simply manipulate an abstract quantity through a set of rules they devise for their own benefit. All financial transactions are now carried out by the exchange of symbols that we are told represent human labor, and by those who do no labor at all.

Money has become a commodity in itself. It can be bought, sold, invested, and it alters in intrinsic value, through inflation and deflation. Dealing in money (finance and banking) has become the primary means of creating wealth in a society which is no longer conerned with producing useful goods and services for human use. It has become totally divorced from reality, unless you are one of the merchants that traffics in it.

Go to a bank, borrow money. It deposits some symbols in your account, which you trade with others for goods and services. You pay by having the bank subtracting from your account and adding to the accounts of your creditors. Somehow, the bank gets rich by doing this. Think about that. Or go to a bank and deposit money. How much interest do you get for it? Practically nothing, unless you can deposit enough to establish yourself as a player.

There is no gold, currency or even checks involved, its all information being transferred. Information which can be copied and transmitted, duplicated, arbitrarily increased (interest), and even maliciously fabricated or destroyed, and which is all manipulated by organizations totally outside your control and who have no obligation or mandate to account to you. And you have no choice but to participate.

The whole financial system is a fraud, a Ponzi scheme operated for the benefit of those who are familiar with its functioning and with the power to dictate and alter its rules, and solely for their convenience and benefit.

There is no money. The source of all wealth is human labor, acting on the earth’s resources. Energy interacting with matter in space and time. Everything else is phoobah.