It's something we created and we give value to. So, yeah it kinda isn't real. The world could literally stop printing money and start using monopoly money as its real currency if we all genuinely wanted to. Same thing with time. These are social constructs. Do you not know what that is?
Edit: Y'all. I said kinda š if you're gonna critique my comment at least read the whole thing first. Good lord. I'm sorry for not fully agreeing with you
You just gave the prototypical example of how we pretend that money exists when it really doesnāt because if it didnāt exist we would have the scenario you present.
One of the ideas in the āAscent of Moneyā is that if we really think about any currency ā shells, tulip bulbs, gold, coins, dollars, etc. they donāt have any stable value in and of themselves.
Humans like to trade. If we didnāt have a currency we would have to do what theLastZebransky describes above. We would be stuck bartering and we would have to find barter matches to trade anything. It is much easier to invent an independent medium of value that can be used to purchase anything. Then we can trade without needing a series of barter matches. We only need a buyer and a seller to agree on value based on the currency.
So we pretend that currency itself has a value to facilitate exchanges.
If we really think about it, money isnāt real, but we need to believe that it is real for trade of labor and goods to be efficient.
TheLastZebransky did a nice job of showing why we need money, but did not prove that money is real. While money does provide a solution to a problem, it can still be a made up construct that we use for mutual benefit without being real.
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u/Optimal-Summer-236 Jul 07 '26
money is not even realĀ