I Will Want More Money Tomorrow

We grow up understanding a few basic theories of the world. One of the first things we are taught in our history class is that we learn to shape our future from our past. We are taught on several occasions how the biological organisms of the earth have evolved and adapted. Any living/breathing organism, animal or plant, adapt and improve themselves according to their environment. As an example, archaeologists have excavated in several parts of the world to show that giraffes used to have shorter necks and they were animals who tried to eat food from higher, taller trees and that over several years their necks grew and they are now the way they are because of these adaptations. Scientists also say, everyday there is some amount of emotional, physical, mental evolution that all living beings go through. I am trying to relate this kind of behavior to the way humans interact with MONEY.

Centuries ago people were still exchanging goods for buying and selling commodities. So let me try to illustrate that period with 2 fictional people, Adam and Eve(please excuse the co-incidence). Adam harvested cotton and spun it into thread and made cloth for a living. Eve processed grains and baked bread. Adam was hungry and wanted bread, but Eve had too many clothes and did not care for any more new clothing. So the theory of "barter" fails in scenarios like these. Humans, being rational, social animals came up with a simple solution. He/she created a medium of exchange that would not have an innate value, but obtain value while used as a medium to buy goods. We started calling this "money". In the past, at the time money was created, man was incredibly less attached to money itself. Adam was making clothes, he would sell the clothes to someone who wanted it and get "money" in return. He paid this "money" to Eve to get the bread that he needed. So the historical man shows that he was actually attached to the goods not the medium.

My theory is, from that moment on, there was a new, important addition to the human environment and that he will adapt, interact and evolve with it. Over time, he understood that money can be used to buy several different goods. Some goods required more money and some required less, and this was deemed by the demand for that commodity. Then he got more attached to this thing in his environment and started understanding that this medium was easy to loan and borrow. He would borrow money in order to buy goods that he could not obtain with the amount of money he has, and then over time he would generate more money in order to return that money to the rightful loaner. The loaner gives money to someone who needs it and has the capability to generate more in the future in order to return that and a small "fee" for the favor of loaning the money. To maintain such activity and to keep it in order, man evolved in understanding that he needed to create an institution to regulate all this activity and created the "bank". Man at several times possessed more money than he needed. He deposited this money to the bank for safekeeping. He realized that the bank was using this money that he was depositing in it to loan out to other users. So if he was doing the bank a favor he wanted a fee for it and thus came interest. Well, all this we know and you are wondering where exactly I am going with all of this. Be patient and read on please.

With time, man thought of new scenarios and created new things and ways to protect, utilize, spend and create more money. Research shows that over the years man has not just used money to invest in other things, but with all the changes he has brought about to this medium of exchange, that mankind as a whole is heavily invested in "money" itself. When you have worked very hard in building, creating, manipulating something you expect something from it. Thankfully "money" has been selfless and has been helping man in return as well. but on a whole all these changes has caused man to evolve to be more attached to money, not just on a rational basis (for the basic purpose he created) but for everything he has later allowed it to manifest into. I think this increase in the emotional attachment to money has given rise to the larger amount of volatility and panic sales in any money market these days. After all these years of relationship between man and money, man has changed and shaped money so much that now money has started changing the way man thinks and acts everyday. This is just a freak thought that I had, trying to help me understand the world's crumbling economic system.

Please post your views on it and any new theories that you might have to understand how money and man have evolved together to be very different things than they started out to be.