Transcript - Izzit.org

MAN: To stop that, they specially milled the edges to make it obvious if somebody cheated. The system
in similar form can be seen today.
WOMAN: These days, printed paper money has mostly replaced coins as a medium of exchange. Today
everybody uses money, without having to think about either its origins, or what it consists of. But the
important point to understand about it is that: of itself, it has no special value. Its value lies only in what
you can do with it. Money itself is simply a mechanism for making it easy to exchange things, like the
people are doing in this market now.
MAN: But, of course, money has other advantages. It’s very hard to swap say- a pound of strawberries
for a pound of peaches, for instance, because strawberries are finished by June, and peaches don’t ripen
until August. But if you sell the strawberries, the money will store their value until August, when you can
buy your peaches.
WOMAN: And money is also a useful measure of worth. If everything has a money price you can
compare the values of a piece of land, a flock of geese or six months hard work by a carpenter- which
otherwise are very hard to compare.
It’s funny to think that although money itself might be worth almost nothing, it happens to be one of
mankind’s most powerful- as well as most fascinating inventions.
33