THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

paper that stated where the metal was kept. The sentence 'I will pay
the bearer the sum of one Pound Sterling' which adorns the Pound
bill is still a reminder of the weight and silver content of the metal
currency. The next step in the disappearing act is already well under
way. The vast majority of our paper money has further
dematerialized into binary bits in computers belonging to our
bankers, brokers, or other financial institutions, and there is serious
talk that all of it may soon join the virtual world. Should we wait
until the last paper bill has disappeared into a cyber-purse to wake
up to the true non-material nature of money?
A working definition of money
Our working definition of money can now be very straightforward:
Money is an agreement, within a community, to use something as a
means of payment.
Each one of these terms is essential in this definition. Seen as an
agreement, money has much in common with other social contracts,
such as political parties, nationality or marriage. These constructs are
real, even if they exist only in people's minds. The money agreement
can be attained formally or informally, freely or coerced, consciously
or unconsciously. Later in this chapter, you will learn about the terms
of our contemporary money agreement.
Money as an agreement is always valid only within a given
community. Some currencies are operational only among a small
group of friends (like tokens used in card games), for certain time
periods (like the cigarette medium of exchange among frontline
soldiers during World War II), or among the citizens of one particular
nation (like most 'normal' national currencies today). Such a
community can be the entire global community (as is the case of the