How the language of money hides the system that governs us

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We have made a strange thing of money.

Practically everyone treats money as though it were a thing: something that exists in a quantity, something we can acquire, accumulate, save, invest, lose, spend or inherit. We are taught that the great purpose of economic life is to obtain as much of this thing as possible.

Money has become so deeply embedded in our thinking that it is difficult to imagine an economy without it. We speak about “the economy” as though the economy and money were inseparable. We talk about earning, spending, saving, investing, borrowing, lending, prices, wages, profits and wealth without stopping to ask what these words are actually describing.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that the concept of money itself is often presented as almost trivial.

A typical definition describes money as a medium of exchange, a measure of value and a store of value. In other words, money is a tool that facilitates exchange.

But how can a mere tool have such extraordinary power over human behaviour?

A spade is a tool for digging. A hammer is a tool for hitting things. A telephone is a tool for communicating. Yet none of these tools has become the supreme objective of human existence.

If money is merely a tool for facilitating exchange, why have we constructed an entire civilisation around acquiring the tool?

Perhaps something is missing from the definition.

The euphemism of “the economy”

Consider the word economy.

It is normally defined as a system for producing, distributing and consuming goods and services within a particular society or geographical area.

That sounds reasonable. But there is an obvious problem.

If that were really what an economy was, then everything we produce, distribute and consume should be part of the economy — whether or not money changes hands.

Suppose I repair your bicycle and you cook me dinner. Something of value has been produced and exchanged between us. Yet no economic transaction has occurred.

Now suppose I repair your bicycle for $50 and you cook me dinner for $50. Suddenly we have two economic transactions.

The actual human activity has not changed. The bicycle has still been repaired and the meal has still been cooked. The difference is that money has been inserted between the two acts.

This reveals something important.

What we call “economic activity” is largely mediated by money.

The unpaid work of parents, neighbours, friends and communities can be enormously valuable, yet much of it disappears from conventional economic measurement. A meal cooked for one’s family is not counted in GDP. A meal purchased from a restaurant is.

A parent caring for a child produces something of immense human value. Pay someone else to provide the same care and it becomes an economic service.

The implication is uncomfortable: our conventional definition of the economy is not really about value creation. It is about monetised value creation.

We might therefore describe the conventional economy more honestly as:

A system for producing and acquiring money through the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.

That small change in wording exposes an enormous difference.

The euphemism of “economics”

Then there is economics.

Economics is generally described as the study of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and the management of economic systems.

But conventional economics almost universally assumes the existence of money.

Supply and demand are expressed in prices.

Costs are expressed in money.

Income is expressed in money.

Profit is expressed in money.

Investment is expressed in money.

Interest is expressed in money.

Inflation is measured in money.

Liquidity is about money.

Economic growth is measured in monetary terms.

Even “value” is routinely reduced to what someone is willing and able to pay.

Try imagining economics without money, and the difficulty becomes obvious. It feels almost like trying to imagine swimming without water.

Yet humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years before modern money. They produced, shared, exchanged, cooperated, borrowed, lent, gifted, traded and cared for one another without anything resembling today’s monetary system.

Money is not the economy.

Money is one way of organising exchange within an economy.

That distinction is fundamental.

The euphemism of “business”

Consider business.

A business is usually described as an organisation that provides goods or services, engages in commercial activity and may operate for profit.

But what is the organising principle of most commercial business?

Money.

A business employs people because it expects the activity to generate more money than it costs. It purchases materials because they are expected to contribute to monetary returns. It produces goods because customers are expected to pay for them.

Providing useful goods and services is essential, of course. But within a conventional business, usefulness is normally a means toward a monetary objective.

The word “business” conveniently puts the activity in the foreground and the monetary purpose in the background.

Perhaps busy-ness is not such a bad alternative description: being busy doing things in order to make money.

The euphemism of “the market”

A market is usually described as a place or system where buyers and sellers exchange goods, services and information.

Again, something is missing.

The modern market is not simply a system of exchange. It is overwhelmingly a system of monetary exchange.

People don’t generally go to a supermarket and exchange a chicken for a haircut. They exchange money for both.

This distinction matters because it makes us believe that markets are natural and inevitable, when what we actually mean is a particular form of exchange mediated by money. It could be said that in money-mediated markets, the money is the product and the goods and services are the “currency”.

Human beings exchanged value long before supermarkets, stock exchanges and financial markets existed.

Exchange itself is ancient.

The monetary market is not.

The euphemism of “capital”

Then we encounter capital.

Capital can mean tools, machinery, buildings and other assets used for production. But in everyday economic language, capital is also very often simply a respectable word for money.

A company needs “capital”.

An investor “deploys capital”.

A business “raises capital”.

A person “has capital”.

Once again, money disappears behind a more sophisticated word.

This leads to an interesting observation about capitalism.

Capitalism is commonly explained as a system based upon private ownership of the means of production. That is certainly an important feature of modern capitalism, but another defining characteristic is frequently overlooked:

production is organised through monetary exchange and monetary accumulation.

Money becomes the universal intermediary between producers and consumers, workers and employers, borrowers and lenders.

One might therefore describe capitalism as money-ism. It is the economic system that results from money-mediated exchange

Change the exchange modality, and many of the assumptions underlying capitalism begin to change with it.

The euphemism of “income”

Income is perhaps more revealing.

Income is simply money coming in. The direction is inwards. It hides what the incoming value stream is from: whether it is recompense for value provided, or otherwise.

We call it a salary, wage, revenue, return, dividend, interest or profit depending upon how the money was obtained.

But if money were not the dominant exchange modality, the concept of “income” would lose much of its meaning.

Instead, we might talk about:

value provided

or

contribution to the community

The direction is outward, and might be called “outgivens” instead of “income”. It is open and transparent, and names what was provided.

We might also call it:

a claim upon the resources and services of the community.

This last description is particularly interesting.

A conventional salary gives someone purchasing power denominated in money. In a non-monetary system, a person’s contribution can instead generate a corresponding capacity to receive value from others.

The mechanism is different, even though exchange still takes place.

The euphemism of “saving”

Saving sounds virtuous and prudent.

But in the monetary system, saving usually means retaining money rather than using it for current consumption — often by placing it in a financial institution where it can be lent or invested.

In other words, much of what we call saving is really the temporary withdrawal of purchasing power from circulation in the hope of obtaining more purchasing power later.

The word “saving” conceals the financial mechanism underneath it.

The euphemism of “work”

Perhaps the most important euphemism is work.

Work is normally presented as a productive human activity.

But not all work is performed for money.

People work in their gardens. They cook. They repair things. They care for children. They help neighbours. They volunteer. They create music. They build things. They teach one another.

Much of this is work.

Yet when we talk about “getting a job”, “going to work” or “earning a living”, we generally mean something much more specific:

Exchanging our time, skills and energy for money.

This is an extraordinary narrowing of the meaning of work.

A job becomes an activity performed for money.

Employment becomes a contractual relationship in which one person performs activities for another in exchange for money.

A career becomes long-term specialisation in activities that can generate increasing amounts of money.

The monetary system has colonised even the language we use to describe our productive lives.

More euphemisms

Once we start looking, the euphemisms are everywhere.

Price becomes the “value” of something, even though price and value are not the same thing.

Profit is described as a “return” or “reward”, rather than the difference between what something costs and what someone receives.

Interest sounds innocent enough, while concealing the fact that money itself can generate more money merely by being lent. No new value needs to be created.

Investment sounds like putting resources into something productive, although financial investment can simply mean purchasing an asset in the expectation that it will produce more money.

Wealth is often treated as though it means abundance, security or wellbeing, when it can simply mean accumulated claims denominated in money.

Cost of living sounds like the cost of being alive. More accurately, it usually means the amount of money required to purchase the goods and services necessary to maintain a particular standard of living.

Economic growth sounds like society becoming richer in every meaningful sense. Usually, however, it means an increase in monetised economic activity. The numbers can increase without any additional value being created.

Consumer sounds like a description of a person. In reality, it reduces a human being to their role as a purchaser within the monetary system.

And perhaps the most revealing phrase of all:

“Make your money work for you.”

Money does not work.

People work.

Machines work.

Animals work.

Nature works.

Money merely represents a set of financial claims and relationships.

When we say that money is “working”, we are really saying that someone, somewhere, is engaged in productive or financial activity that may cause one person’s monetary claims to increase.

The great myth: there isn’t enough money

Behind all of this lies another powerful belief:

There isn’t enough money to go around.

We are told that money is scarce, and therefore everyone must compete for their share.

But money is not like oil, land or fresh water.

Modern money is largely created through financial and banking systems. Its quantity can change. New money can be created; existing money can disappear.

What is actually scarce is not money itself but the real things money represents claims upon: food, housing, energy, land, skilled labour, materials, time and human attention.

This distinction matters enormously.

If ten people want ten loaves of bread, creating more monetary units does not automatically create more bread.

But the opposite is also true.

If a community has abundant skills, empty buildings, unused capacity, available resources and people who need one another’s services, the absence of conventional money does not necessarily mean there is an absence of economic potential.

Sometimes what is missing is simply an appropriate mechanism for connecting available capacity with unmet needs.

Escaping the money trap

This is where alternative exchange modalities become interesting.

The question is not:

“How can we get rid of money?”

That is neither necessary nor particularly useful.

The better question is:

“Why should one exchange modality have a monopoly?”

Cash is one way of exchanging value.

Bank transfers are another.

Barter, swapping and direct exchanging are another.

Time banking is another.

Time trading is another.

Local currencies are another.

Mutual credit is another.

A community can have multiple ways of recognising and facilitating the exchange of value.

This is precisely where systems such as the Community Exchange System (CES) become significant.

Mutual credit begins with a very different premise.

Instead of requiring someone to possess conventional money before they can obtain something from another person, members can exchange directly within a network and record reciprocal claims.

If Alice provides something of value to Bob, Alice receives a credit and Bob records a corresponding debit. Alice can then use her credit to receive something from Carol, David or another member of the community.

The system does not require everyone to accumulate a scarce commodity before exchange can happen.

It allows the capacity to contribute to become part of the mechanism of exchange.

This changes the question from:

“How much money do you have?”

to:

“What can you contribute, and what do you need?”

That is a profound shift.

Beyond the euphemisms

The purpose of examining these euphemisms is not simply to play with words.

Language shapes thought.

If we call something “income”, we stop asking what is actually being exchanged.

If we call something “economic growth”, we may forget to ask whether people’s lives are actually improving.

If we call something “wealth”, we may confuse monetary accumulation with wellbeing.

If we call something “the market”, we may forget that markets are human constructions rather than forces of nature.

And if we call money the economy, we make it almost impossible to imagine alternatives.

The challenge facing us is therefore partly linguistic and partly conceptual.

We need to separate exchange from money, value from price, work from employment, wealth from accumulation, and economic activity from monetary activity.

Once we do that, a much larger world becomes visible.

Money is not the economy.

Money is not value.

Money is not wealth.

Money is not work.

Money is not production.

Money is not exchange.

Money is a particular technology for organising certain kinds of exchange.

And technologies can be changed.

They can be supplemented.

They can be redesigned.

They can be replaced when they no longer serve us well.

The real question, then, is not whether we can imagine a world without money.

It is whether we can imagine a world in which money is no longer the only language in which human value can speak.

That is the possibility opened by alternative exchange modalities.

And perhaps that is where the next economy begins.