Money has been with us even before we are born and has been used by our parents, grandparents, great grandparent, great-great-grandparents, and before them. Some cultures have deities or gods associated with money to show how close the relationship we have with money. People really love money, and nowadays people much love their money more than their honor — what pitiful souls. However, there is a small percentage of us who hate money because of many reasons. For such, some believe money is the source of evil, a root of greed. Some also believe that money is often associated with arrogant aristocrats and don’t want to his current images polluted by devilish stereotypes. Or there are some people like who hate money because of its true nature which I will explain later, but I still like gold and silver. They are indeed beautiful, like a woman.

Money, it is a unique convention that only existed in homo sapiens compared to other animals’ kingdoms. Even though, the existence of money solves the issues in the barter system such as the rightful amount or quantities for certain wealth to be exchanged between parties justly, and reduces the dispute in trading since money is a convention that communities using them is agree with its mechanism and mathematical solutions. Before we fall deep into the mechanism of money, let’s our thoughts wander for a moment. Imagine, what if we still use the barter system and what a society looks like on a functioning barter system. What it took to make them successful.

(…)

I believe humanity is going to be much wiser, and prosperous in morals and attitude but with the price, technological advancement may fall behind. Since what it takes to a functional barter system is placed on mankind themselves, they need to trust themselves, have no resentment, and realized who they really are, and their roles and keep contributing to societies that are impossible for us due to our ignorance. We no longer trust others even ourselves, hence, one day someone creates a symbol that we called it as money to put our trust in the name of solving a dispute among traders. A king, an emperor have duties to solve the dispute among his people and citizen put their trust in the king to solve their disputes hence the trust toward the king is often symbolized in form of metal, coins, paper with the name of kings, sultan or emperor and using it’s weight or number describe the price on the market. But symbols like numbers are too simple to explain the universe. For a simpler analogy, my kidneys may price thousands of Ringgit or dollars in the market, but to me my kidneys are priceless.

In general, that money is the symbol of trust which has been lost on mankind in this era. You can’t simply come to a stranger’s house and ask to stay for nights. I believe there are some people out there welcoming their guests into their houses despite being completely stranger. But you could go to any hotel, house inn, and homestay and spend the nights as long you have money for them in exchange for trust and services. Deep down in humanity, we lack of trust and we crave for it. The richest is not about how much money you have, but how much trust you can give.

It is important for a majority to have their system of symbols in their life. It stabilizes their existence as sentient entities as we need religion or ‘ugama’ to stabilize our beliefs. Hence, money stabilizes our trust system in societies.

This is the perfect time to rethink on the purpose of money and its value which we’re seeking for. Is it worth the sacrifices? Do we actually fulfill what we working for? Did we have been living in as a ‘modern slave’ where you can not survive without being a part of the rat race and having others authorize our life? Is this freedom that our ancestors fought for? Why did even happen? Why is money often accused as a source of evil? Answer this question: Is gun evil? Is the police firing a gun to protect the citizen considered evil? But if the murderer uses it to kill an innocent man is considered evil? In the end, a gun is just a tool we used to pursue the ‘value’ we seek such as safety, food, knowledge, and much more. Hence, what is money? To me, money didn’t have any value. It is just a symbol to represent the value in terms of price, or rather it is just a metric of the wealth we have like land, fungible assets, and non-fungible asses. And the real value is determined by what we give, by what we contribute or service.

In the primitive era where humanity used a certain material as a metric for pricing items such as gold and silver which were commonly used in early civilization. It is a simpler mechanism than gold have they have its own value, as a precious metal with a bunch of attractive features including didn’t rust compared to iron we use it for dentistry, and have the potential for technological advancement on this material. However, that was a rational argument that I used to protect my image. To be honest, that metal is beautiful and since they didn’t rust, their beauty was preserved much longer. Isn’t what we did with cosmetics products? To preserve the beauty of women to look younger than their real age.

With better technological advancement, humanity can manufacture money using paper. But it was more treated like how we give our child a degree certificate from an education institution to qualify this person of the scroll is trustworthy to carry out the duties of the specific position to them. Maybe, that’s why I didn’t want to come on my own convocation for my bachelor degree. It is so stupid If I could enjoy it except for those who are blatant ignorance. I keep challenging my own status quo to remind you having degree is just a symbol we used to represent ourselves. However, our degree is to simple to describe of who we really are — the problem is you won’t know who you are. And this ‘I don’t know’ gives you the opportunity to have your own adventure. Nevertheless, with the invention of paper money or banknote which we have today with sophisticated printing technology and selective material used to prevent third parties from forgery. This is the era where we start branding our money based on what governance it produced and the integrity of money and its currency value depends on how well the governance is either on the bank or government. Compared to gold and silver which are used in the medieval period, the coins accepted pretty much anywhere that accept the concept of money since the material itself have their own value.

Unlikely for paper money or banknotes or cheques, the value of money are protected by the government or banks in form gold and silver which also known as gold standard currency. Instead of giving people use real gold and silver circulated among them, the citizen of the state are given state’s brand paper as currency and it’s value of currency relies with how much gold reserve backed on banknotes which much more complicated mechanism that before because now we have gold reserve to protect and maintain while keeping the trust system of citizen in check. Since 1970’s until now however, whole world, countries have move forward with new, much more sophisticated mechanism with full of delusive and manipulative mechanism controlled by banks which called as fiat currency.

Before we gone deep in fiat currency which is the reason why I hate money because it have full of tricks and manipulation and I’m not too stupid to not aware of them. Let’s get back with the progression money. Started with barter system where we unable to solve the dispute among two parties because of resentment we have on exchanged item quantity, hence we using trust system on mathematical solution using material we agreed upon like gold and we shape it and weigh it to specific metric as our reference for trading. One day, we no longer could trust people with gold circulating among the citizen, the gold might fall into enemy state and use it for funding for the war. Hence the state decide to keep the precious metal in vault and protected from being circulated toward enemy state and released nickel and cotton paper as symbols of money and currency value backed by gold standard and their governance. All the name of lack of trust – Humanity indeed have trust dilemma. But doing so simply putting target behind your back.

There are some conspiracy theories I heard before regarding fiat currency but here is not the place to discuss those topics. Let’s reveal the true nature of fiat currency we have now used as money. The funny is my parents still believed our currency is backed by gold. Yes, fiat currency is still young in age about five decades compared to previous type of money used in past. And we all noticed the banknotes are issued by separate entity which commonly are central bank or federal reserve. But, why I hate fiat currency so much? Well, it relates to the belief and religion of Islam. The danger of riba’ (usury).

Common people will only saw the usury when we are making loan with bank. No, it didn’t end with that. The entire currency system we used are riba’ no matter you are using a hard cash or credit card. As long we agree to use fiat currency as our monetary system, we unknowingly contributing for disaster because of riba’. To understand how riba’ works in simpler analogy:

Person A have petrol station and own multiple kind of vehicle. One day person B who desperately need to use vehicle to go for work as taxi driver decide to borrow car from person A and agree to lend one of his vehicle in condition person B could only fuel his car from person A’s petrol station in agreement. This is riba’

Imagine if Person A is banks and Person B is the government, the same time the world just start recovering from world war where government have exhausted their resources for defense and military. The only money left is financial institution who hold people’s deposit money. However, people’s money is scarce and not enough to fund a loan for development but one thing that bank have in their image — Trust. What a perfect recipe for money. Hence, if we want to apply for loan for a house, car we unknowingly we agree using fiat currency printed by them in our daily lives to pay for fuel, pay bills et cetera. The reason why living cost is increase while the salary were not. Because we play a wrong game. Supposed the worker need to treat his service like a loan with establishing new kind of statutory body and the employer need to pay employee as he paid with his installments and abide to changes of changes of OPR (overnight policy rates) but this might never happen because we are too late. Riba’ didn’t just meant usury but also mean exploitation and unjust.

Inflation? Increasing living cost? Unaffordable house price? Of course we experienced this and later our grandchildren are the one who most suffered one day once the capitalist successfully occupies most land and resources while the rest still living in rat race to make money to survive while having desire for temporary financial freedom just for himself. Wake up! We are leading to catastrophes, a chaos of mistrust and unjust where we are no longer able to trust justice.

Fiat currency may benefit us on short-term. It makes people have more money than before, pause the next world war and rapid technological and urban development since money no longer a scarce. The potential of humanity is lies on human itself and trust is the key to unlock the potential. Similar trick we did to our children. But in long term, soon the expanding balloon will blow up and realized we have been manipulated in the name of trust, the betrayal of the system of trust we blindly followed.

Having this realization remind me with what being prophesied before, where in the end of the times, nobody could escape from riba’. And here we are. A life and society full with lies and manipulation.

Quoted by the draft on first chapter of e-book “the book of money (laundering)” written by [al.]

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