Me monkey. Me have 50 banana. Too many banana. Me give you banana. You give promise rock. Later i no have banana. Give back promise rock. You give me banana. Money am tomorrow banana. Promise rocks imaginary now. Count rocks with lightning. "Less fraud" says governmonkey
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Sounds like you need to read the book Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber.
It's a devised method of trading value for other things of value. It used to be pretty rocks, then precious metals, then pieces of paper, and now it's bits on computers. As Drew Carey once said, the everything is made up and the points don't matter anyway. Except when those points are the difference between having a heated home or freezing your ass off in a cardboard box behind a Safeway.
This was a pretty good series on the subject. He goes into what "currency" is right at the beginning
At one time, it was a government promise to exchange for a certain amount of gold. After that became a limit on growth of a nation it becomes "fiat currency" which is simply a conceptual agreement of value to make the exchange of goods and services easier. This is your AMEX money.
One answer: The ability to pay taxes to the largest local military power, in exchange for keeping a 'good' relationship with the legal system it operates with.
Another: a tool for coordination and distribution of resources between large groups of people that does not require very many (or very long) meetings.
Symbolic labour
Money is a promise given to you that someone else will be ready to give you something you want if you give money to them.
And you trust the money to be useful when you need to make other humans do stuff, it can be giving their time or owning something that you didn't own before.
Money itself don't have any value, it's a pointer to anything of value. Without money it would be very hard to know exactly how rare is rice compared to sweater. But now using money you can know that you require same amount of human efforts for bringing 70 kg of rice as 1 pcs of sweater to the superstore.