What is Money?
Sunflower and the MoneyMuseum intensively discuss how our modern understanding of money has evolved throughout history. We develop categories of terms which capture the essense of money. Presented here.
Today to an almost unimaginable extent the world depends on money. Living and surviving are contingent globally on having money at hand, on how much money you have and on how much money is made globally, everywhere throughout the world. Money reigns over society as a universal institution, in the meantime a global one. Under very difficult conditions a few people might manage to live without money. But society as a whole, every state indeed the entire world as such relies firmly on money to survive. Under money’s prevailing command, the first imperative for them is that the calculations that underpin this thing money somehow manage to function.
That’s what makes the dangers arising from money’s crises so far-reaching. That’s why even the world’s most powerful governments are compelled to undertake every conceivable measure to contain the latest crisis as quickly as possible and forestall the onset of the next probable crisis as long as possible. Preserving money as a system is the goal here. Accordingly, most discussions about money as such today focus on its dangers. They aim almost without exception to purge money of its crises or at least mitigate them. Their approach assumes with each threat to money that money can also repel every threat. That is an assumption far removed, however, from the reality of money.
The Sunflower Foundation sees it as an important task to counter all that through a theory of money that doesn’t diminish this reality. Because not just in a crisis where money ceases to function but also where it functions unhindered, money subjects all commerce to its very specific constraints. Over the course of the recent centuries this has led, for example, to the warming of the climate that is now threatening life globally. The imperative to exploit everything in the world that yields enough money is increasingly corroding the world’s natural foundations—and the people themselves. To counter this some deep thinking is needed about how money has come to its power, what that power consists of precisely and what it actually does, but above all: how it could be withdrawn from money. To demonstrate all this, the Sunflower Foundation begins here.
Material and Time are closely related to money. But while material has played a crucial role for a long time, time and money have connected relatively late in history. Here, we present the whole story.
- Money and Material
- Money and Time
Money is closely related to Power and social Relations and therefore belongs to the science of sociology. An introduction is presented here.
- Money and Power
- Money and Relation
Because money functions as exchange medium today, it is generally thought to have originated in barter transactions – mistakenly. Explained in detail here. At the same time, money forms people’s thinking by forcing them in various ways to be steered by money. Read the whole story.
- Money and Barter
- Money as a Thought Form
Economies without money – how should that work? We also don’t know. But we do want to think about it. People do things, give each other gifts, share what they have, help each other and contribute to the success of enterprises large and small – without money. They did it earlier and they do it today. And what does the future look like?
- Thoughts about “good money”, Commoning and other Ideas
The financial markets collapse, greed takes over, agro-investors chase away small farmers, financial crises and damages to the environment … what is happening to our modern money? Couldn't it behave as “good money”? Here, you get answers.
We have identified 12 characteristics of money. These characteristics make up our modern money, each element leads to the next and money thus becomes a totality.
- or go to the articles and videos on Money:critical produced by Sunflower Foundation.