The History of Money by Jack Weatherford, 1997, Excerpts
Money constitutes the focal point of modern world culture. Money defines relationships among people, not just between customer and merchant in the marketplace or employer and laborer in the workplace. Increasingly in modern society, money defines relationships between parent and child, among friends, between politicians and constituents, among neighbors, and between clergy and parishioners. Money forms the central institutions of the modern market and economy, and around it are grouped the ancillary institutions of kinship, religion, and politics. Money is the very language of commerce for the modern world.
They are united by one thing: money. No matter whether they call their money dollars, rubles, yen, marks, francs, pounds, pesos, bahts, they all operate in essentially the same way as smaller parts of an international monetary system that reaches every farm, island, and village on the globe. No matter where and no matter what the local currency, the modern system permits the easy and quick flow of money from one market to another.
Money forces humans to reduce qualitative differences to quantitative ones. It forces a numbering of things, and this quantification allows things that are very different to be compared. Money, like the calendar and the system of measurements, is a cultural construct that may have arbitrary aspects, but to function properly it needs stability and predictability.
In the global economy that is still emerging, the power of money and the institutions built on it will supersede that of any nation, combination of nations, or international organization now in existence. Propelled and protected by the power of electronic technology, a new global elite is emerging - an elite without loyalty to any particular country.
