As with all treatises on economics, one commences with the nature of money and the three purposes it serves: exchange, guarantee, and investment (as Keynes elucidated in his three motives). However, there is nothing quite like it in the natural order. The closest analogue is food. It serves as a medium of exchange (of energy to survive or procreate) and as a means of storage. But food is not an investment; calories do not spontaneously multiply. In fact, food is bound by entropy; its essence and value diminish with time. This victory over temporal decay is the greatest asset of money. It is a refusal to wither. Perhaps it is our ultimate pursuit of immortality, with power and fame being the earlier, more fragile candidates.
However, this presents a metastasizing issue. If money only grows over time through interest and accumulation, it requires infinite space (or at least infinite resources) to occupy. But the physical world is finite. The earth’s carrying capacity is fixed, yet we attempt to stretch the planet on a Procrustean bed to satisfy our ledgers. We are forced to engineer a state of perpetual production just to justify the currency's growth. Therefore, consumerism is a structural consequence of our definition of money as a permanent store of value, not merely human avarice. But what if money possessed a withering component—a demurrage? If money "rusted" like iron or rotted like fruit, it would lose its potential as an instrument of hoarding. People might redirect their focus toward loved ones if capital were as ephemeral and mortal as our own bodies. The sweatshops that generate massive dividends would shutter, and the oil rigs would slow to a pace dictated by necessity rather than accumulation.
That was perhaps wishful thinking. Let us consider the reality of this exploding ledger :-what are the consequences? One is the inevitable linguistic surrender where "-llions" becomes a common suffix. The other, more dramatic shift is the mounting pressure to peg money to something tangible; to re-anchor nature into the equation. Currently, a nation’s capacity to print money is mirrored by the perceived lethality of its military units. The military-industrial complex serves as the sentinel for the Federal Reserve, ensuring that "faith and credit" are backed by kinetic force. Yet, when money is tethered to a mineral or a resource, the hierarchy inverts. Geography becomes the kingmaker, and colonialism becomes the praxis once again.