Money

Money is not the object. A banknote is paper worth a few cents, a gold coin is a lump of metal, and a bank balance is a number in a database. What turns any of them into money is that a group of people agree to accept it in exchange for real things.

That agreement is what does the work. It is why the same shiny trading card is precious in one playground and worthless in the next, and why cigarettes became money inside prisoner-of-war camps with no government, no bank and no law.

Economists describe money’s job in three parts: a means of exchange, a measure of value, and a store of value for later. All three only function while the agreement holds.

The costume keeps changing — shells, cattle, stone discs, coins, paper, numbers on a screen — but the thing underneath never does. And because it is an agreement, it can break: when trust dies, money dies with it.