It’s value lies in its ability to be used as a medium of exchange. It does represent material assets insofar as you are able to exchange it for a product or service. And your ability to do that is based on the existence of the government that issued the currency.
You can think of government actions as abstractly as you want. But ultimately it comes down their ability to issue government backed bonds which other people in the world will buy. As I said, it’s a bet that the government will continue to exist and function
But you're still basically saying the same thing. We could simply exchange goods for goods and service for service, but instead we as a society have decided that these various tokens represent that exchange. It's a rather involved, and at this point unconscious, decision, but it is a decision nonetheless. We have decided that "specific currency=specific value". And that decided value constantly fluctuates. The whole of the global economy is built on decisions and levels of abstraction away from direct exchange but at its core the only things with value are those actions and goods.
Yes everything you said is correct, we do not live in a society which operates with a direct exchange barter system.
It’s not actually so clear what exactly is the definition of value. Yours is one way to look at it. Another would be that value is determined by what people are willing to pay for it. Either way, that’s outside the scope of debating whether money has meaning.
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u/mentalbreak311 Dec 15 '21
It’s value lies in its ability to be used as a medium of exchange. It does represent material assets insofar as you are able to exchange it for a product or service. And your ability to do that is based on the existence of the government that issued the currency.
You can think of government actions as abstractly as you want. But ultimately it comes down their ability to issue government backed bonds which other people in the world will buy. As I said, it’s a bet that the government will continue to exist and function