What is money?
Money is a medium of exchange.
The original form of exchanging one form of production for another was barter. If the person who grew grain needed some eggs, the grain farmer would swap some grain he grew for the eggs he needed.
This is obviously bulky and not very flexible. You would need a lot of eggs to buy a cow!
So money was invented as a more convenient method of exchange than barter but the original purpose of money remains useful and valid, to be a means of exchange for valuable production.
The tool of money has had other purposes or uses assigned to it, a storage of wealth, a means of speculation, a tool of control etc.
It has also been debased by governments printing more currency than there are goods and services in circulation, resulting in inflation.
Why do people come together?
Essentially, for exchange. That exchange can be in the form of communication, friendship, spousal support, or the exchange of goods and services.
What is government?
Sane government is a group of individuals conducting operations calculated to provide a safe, stable environment for its own population and its neighbours’ populations to live safely, freely, produce and trade.
Where a group purporting to be a government does anything other than this then it is not actually being a government but something else entirely.
Looking at their actions and products, not their words, you will be able to adjudicate the ‘something else’ that most governments are being.
If a government is taxing their citizens and not providing a safe, stable environment for its own population and its neighbours’ populations to live safely, freely, produce and trade, then it is closer to being a con operation or an extortion racket than a government.
And if you look around the world, at the ability of the population in a given country to live safely, freely, produce and trade, you will readily come to the conclusion that there is not a valid government out there.
I’d like this to change. But it will only change if a big enough percentage of the population know what a government should do and insist that their leaders perform those functions.
Hence this article.
So please feel free to share it.