Survey On Money

Dru McInerney

Gov 490 Professor Miller

2/6/14

Survey On Money

I interviewed a panel of my friends that were mostly students in the George Mason business school. Their majors consisted of Economics, Accounting and Business Management. I felt out of the three majors that the economics major gave me the most detailed answers and I honestly had to look up several terms they used in there responses. The Accounting major seemed to give a very straightforward answer to my questions. And the Business Management Major fell somewhere in between.

The first question I asked was who invented money? The accounting major jumped in straight of the bat saying that Phoenicians were the first civilization to use money. The economics major danced around question not giving me a very straightforward answer, he wanted me to elaborate on the question apparently it was too broad. Business management major said people have been using all sorts of things such as livestock and coinage for money since the beginning of time.

Next question was what turns an object into money? The Economics Major described it as anything that has worth and a universal value. Something that can be used anywhere in the world. This reminded me of when Seaford described money as “Providing a measure of value.” Seaford also references how Greek coinage is what separates primitive and modern money.

Do you imagine a time where people don’t believe in money? The accounting major answered this question by referencing Germany post world war one. The Frank became completely worthless because the Germans were attempting to pay off their war debts. They most likely didn’t believe in the system of money when they had to cart thousands of dollars to the market to pay for bread. We then started to debate about whether in times of religious dominance did people believe in money or religion. The business management major referenced that even though religion was a huge factor during medieval times priests were still getting paid to save people. If you sinned you could use money to cleanse yourself.

My first question was how did the development of online banking change the money system? The economics major said that it changed everything and made money way more accessible and international. The accounting major said how actual paper money and coinage have become way less prominent because of online banking. This made me think back to Seaford saying that coinage made money modern. Could one day you make the argument that coinage is primitive and online banking is modern money?

Final question was what would a world without money look like? My panel all joked that they would definitely need a new major if that were the case. They then said it would be anarchy there would be no way of interacting and exchanging with each other. This made me think of the philosopher Pythagoras; Pythagoras had a philosophy that everything is made up of numbers. Numbers are everywhere you cant go anywhere without interacting with numbers. This made me think can you go anywhere in our world today without some sort of transaction that could be considered money?