Essay On Money Without Money

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Without money we would all be rich

Could we transcend money in the future of finance?

What’s that old saying… “money makes the world go round”?

Aristotle considered every object to have two uses: the function or purpose for which it was created, and for trading or bartering. However, without the timely coincidence of wants between traders, barter potential remains severely limited unless there is an underlying medium of value exchange.

Hence money emerged. 

The Greek philosopher has been criticised for suggesting that money was invented to replace bartering, instead created as a quantifiable form of “I owe you” or a store of value or credit in modern day terms.

Early money manifested as cattle or grain, metals and artefacts. Gold and

Goldsmiths served as financial intermediaries, allowing depositors to store their wealth in private vaults and charging a fee and providing a non-transferable receipt of quantity and purity.

Goldsmiths eventually began re-lending on behalf of the depositor, forgoing the fee for storage and even paying interest in return. Receipts became transferable, and enabled safer and more convenient transfer of money representing their underlying assets.

In time, goldsmiths became banks, and banks began issuing banknotes giving rise to paper money (only a fraction of which would be backed by actual deposits, but theoretically convertible at any point). Banknotes were standardised as legal tender and precious metals were replaced with symbolic money.

The first Australian banks were regulated by the government, with controlled interest rates. They provided deposit and mortgage products to consumers or investment banking and private equity to businesses.

Deregulation slowly allowed banks (and lenders) to set their own rates, provide new finance options, operate in both consumer and commercial markets, as well trade in the money market — the buying and selling money in the form of various layers of financial instruments such as loans and

Digital experiences, beautiful designs, responsive applications, push notifications, social identification. Machine intelligence, recommendations, natural language processing, predictions, crypto-ledgers. Each one a step forward for technology, bringing yesterday’s financial products closer to tomorrow’s societal needs.

Economies are changing. Decentralisation and sharing are powering adoption of new platforms for financial (and ultimately human) collaboration. Automation, robotics and artificial intelligence are bringing us closer to a post-work society. The distribution of wealth is becoming increasingly disparate, challenging economic equality and extending wealth gaps in every nation.

Without money we would all be rich. Money unlocked the potential of value exchange, allowing us to give more than we have and take more than we need.

We live in a time of serious opportunity to modernise financial services for our future, but who will rise to the