Money as in cash or numbers in an account, has much function. As in Monetary Economics, money can be medium of exchange, a store of value, and unit of account.
In social life, money has broader function; to gain power, respects, buy law, dignity, and many other magical things.
Because of those ‘functions’:
People commited suicide because of money
People left home because of money
People divorce because of money
People lost opportunities because of money
It seems that money as in monetary form has deep influences in nowadays social life.
As for me, it’s not (really).
I realized what really money is when I had Econ101 class in my very first year in the university. I deeply remember when my Professor showed the class a tiny jar consists of ‘chopped money’ (banks notes that no longer used are chopped in the Central Bank to avoid miss-used of them) as a souvenir when she visited the Central Bank. At that time, I just had a flash of a week before the class there was a boy that commited suicide because he was ashamed being lack of those banks notes valued two thousands Rupiah to pay his biology experiment in school. How contrast and tragic!! I thought, the boy wouldn’t have killed himself if he knew what money really means.
Put it in economic logic, his value of life was less than ‘a paper’ written Rp 2.000.
Right that second, I hate monetary system, very much. I thought, how cruel of these people who created monetary system do. How it fools so much people to belive in those notes, which actually papers, to be something most important of their life.
Something to add, my Professor also told the class that when the US began to use cash/coins in general as medium of exchange, the government wrote “In God We Trusts” on it, to make people belive in the value of those papers and coins. What a technique, what a monetary engineering.
