What Is Money, Really?

Money might be the most powerful story ever told. It’s the fiction we collectively agreed to believe and that universal agreement has shaped empires, economies, and every daily decision from the cup of coffee you buy to the house you dream of owning. Yet, for something that governs our lives so completely, few of us ever stop to ask: what actually is money?

The Myth That Built the Modern World

Anthropologist, and one of my favorite authors, David Graeber, in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, dismantled one of the biggest economic myths ever sold: that money evolved naturally from barter. You’ve probably heard the story that people once traded cows for grain, or shoes for salt, until that got inconvenient. Eventually, someone invented coins to make life easier. It sounds tidy, logical, and evolutionary, but it’s also almost entirely untrue.

There’s no evidence that any society functioned purely on barter before inventing money. What Graeber found, instead, were credit systems: social networks of trust. Communities operated on an unspoken understanding: “I’ll help you today, if you’ll help me tomorrow.” Value wasn’t stored in coins or tokens but in relationships. That means money didn’t emerge to fix a logistical problem; it emerged to formalize trust and to quantify obligation. To make something fluid and social into something measurable, enforceable, and eventually, taxable. In that sense, money was never just about exchange, it was about control.

The Birth of a Shared Belief

If you asked your dog to spot you a $20, it would tilt its head to the side adorably in confusion. Money is a human invention, but it’s not like a hammer or a wheel. It’s more like religion, law, or art; it’s a universal fiction, as Yuval Noah Harari called it in Sapiens, another life-changing book. A universal fiction is an idea that doesn’t exist in nature but becomes real because enough people agree it’s real.

• A dollar bill is worth something only because we collectively act as if it is.

• A nation exists only because we believe in the borders drawn on paper.

• Human rights exist only because we believe humans should have them.

Money is one of these shared fictions and arguably the most successful one ever created. It bridges strangers, cultures, and centuries. You and I could meet on opposite sides of the world, not speak the same language, and still transact instantly. That’s extraordinary! The paper, metal, or pixels that represent money don’t hold value. We do. Our shared faith in the system is the invisible scaffolding that keeps the whole structure standing.

From Metal to Myth

Early money was physical. Coins made of gold, silver, or bronze; materials chosen not because they were practical, but because they were scarce and shiny. Governments stamped faces of rulers onto them as a kind of divine signature: “This has value because I say so.” But metal money was heavy, and trade expanded faster than mines could supply it. So people began using promissory notes, in other words, paper claims to metal stored elsewhere. Over time, those claims became the money itself. That shift was monumental. It meant that money no longer needed to be something; it only needed to represent something. And if representation was enough, then what mattered wasn’t gold, it was trust.

Fast-forward a few centuries, and governments dropped the gold standard entirely. On August 15, 1971 the U.S. dollar became backed by decree, not metal; a concept known as “fiat” money. A dollar was worth a dollar because the government said so and people believed it. If that feels circular, that’s because it is; if you stop to really think about it, it’s almost nonsensical. Our entire global economy is built on collective belief!

The Collective Hallucination of Value

In one sense, money is the purest form of democracy. Its value is determined by consensus, not by decree alone. If we all woke up tomorrow and decided the dollar was worthless, it would be… instantly. But that same democracy is fragile: when belief wavers, economies tremble. Think about how bank runs, inflation, and financial crises all stem from shifts in collective faith. Look closely and you’ll see that the “value” of money is just a reflection of how much we trust one another to keep playing the game. That’s the quiet absurdity Graeber highlighted: money works only because we behave as if it’s real. And yet, for many, this imaginary construct dictates our self-worth, our stress levels, and even our moral standing.

How Money Became Moral

At some point, debt, which was once a social agreement, became a moral failing. The language “You owe me” shifted from a statement of cooperation to a judgment of character. Religions began to treat debt and sin as interchangeable concepts. The Lord’s Prayer originally said, “Forgive us our debts.” Even salvation became a transaction: a cosmic debt paid by someone else’s sacrifice.

Graeber traced how this moralization of debt justified power structures; from kings who taxed peasants to nations that colonized others under the guise of repayment. When we confuse money with morality, inequality starts to feel righteous. We stop asking why someone is poor and start assuming it’s their fault.

The Social Technology of Control

Money, in and of itself, isn’t evil; it’s a technology. But like any technology, it shapes behavior. When governments issue currency, they don’t just facilitate trade; they define what counts as legitimate value. A teacher nurturing the next generation might earn $50,000 a year. A hedge fund manager moving numbers on a screen might earn $5 million. The market claims that’s objective truth, but it’s really just consensus, another shared story about what matters.

Once you see that, the illusion starts to crack. You begin to realize that markets don’t measure worth; they measure agreement, and sometimes, that agreement is absurd.

The Fiction Feels Real

It’s easy to dismiss all this as abstract theory until you feel it in your chest. Think about the anxiety that surfaces when your checking account runs low or the rush when you see a payment hit your balance. None of that emotion is caused by the actual money itself, which in today’s world are basically just numbers in an app. It’s caused by the story we’ve internalized: that our balance reflects our value, our safety, and our place in the world. This is where, I believe, money becomes dangerous. Not because of greed, but because of identity.

When Belief Becomes Self-Worth

Most of us were raised to measure success by financial milestones: savings, salaries, assets, etc. It’s understandable. Those markers provide structure in a chaotic world. But they also tether our self-worth to a collective hallucination. If money is belief, and belief can change, then your worth is never secure under that system. It can inflate, deflate, or vanish overnight.

That insecurity drives consumerism. We buy to feel validated. We chase status symbols not because we’re vain, but because we’re uncertain. If everyone else believes a certain brand, car, or lifestyle signals success, owning it temporarily restores our belonging in the shared fiction. But “belonging” in this shared fiction purchased on those terms is always rented.

The Irony of Infinite Money

Here’s a curious fact: modern money isn’t finite. When you take out a loan, your bank doesn’t hand you someone else’s savings. It creates new money, digits that didn’t exist before, by typing them into your account. That’s it. This means the system depends on constant borrowing. For every dollar in circulation, there’s a matching dollar of debt. The economy grows only if more people take on obligations that didn’t exist yesterday. In other words, our belief in money requires perpetual motion; stopping the wheel would collapse the system. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s design. But it reveals how detached money has become from real value. We’re no longer trading goods or services; we’re trading stories about the future.

The Future as Collateral

Money today is essentially a claim on tomorrow’s productivity. Every debt assumes that the future will be bigger, faster, richer. But what happens when that faith wavers, when we collectively sense that endless growth isn’t sustainable? We start to see cracks: recessions, inequality, environmental collapse. The system relies on believing that tomorrow will always pay for today. It’s the oldest promise in the book.

Graeber argued that what we call “the economy” is just a massive ledger of promises; some of which are kept, and most of which are rolled forward indefinitely. That realization is both terrifying and liberating. Terrifying, because it exposes how precarious everything is. Liberating, because it means we could choose to play differently.

Reclaiming the Narrative

If money is a shared belief, then it’s also a shared choice. We can’t opt out of the story entirely but we can decide how to interpret it. You can treat money as a mirror instead of a master and see it, not as proof of worth, but as a tool for freedom, generosity, and alignment. When you earn, save, or spend intentionally, you’re rewriting the narrative and dictating: “I may have to participate in this collective fiction, but I don’t let it define who I am.”

Practical Magic

Let’s make this less abstract. Imagine two people earning the same income. One spends reactively by chasing validation, comparing lifestyles, soothing insecurity. The other spends reflectively by aligning purchases with values, goals, and genuine needs. Both operate within the same monetary fiction, but their experience of it is completely different.

The first person is owned by the story while the second is editing it. That’s the difference The UnBuy Project exists to teach; not to demonize money, but to demystify it. To remind you that the rules can be learned, and once learned, can be rewritten. I admit, this process, this journey, is challenging. It requires rewiring decades of socially engrained beliefs, but I assure you the feeling of liberation is worth it.

The Original Promise

Before there were banks, there were promises. Before there were prices, there was trust. Money is simply the physical manifestation of that trust; the artifact of our willingness to cooperate with strangers. When you see it that way, it stops being mysterious and starts being human. Inherently, money is not evil. It’s not even real! It’s just a story we tell together, sometimes poorly, sometimes beautifully. Because it’s a story, we can change it.

Remember that debt and money are social constructs, not natural laws. They are agreements, and agreements can evolve. When you remember that, something shifts. The fear fades a little and the guilt softens. You start to see money as energy you can direct, not a verdict on who you are. The goal isn’t to reject the system, it’s to stop confusing your reflection in it with your real self. You are not your balance, you are not your income, you are not your debt. You are the one who gives these numbers power by believing in them.

Final Reflection

So, what is money, really? 

It’s a story so persuasive that we built our civilization around it. It’s the world’s longest-running roleplay, a fiction so successful that it became our reality. But like any story, its meaning is derived by the reader. So ask yourself: if money is just belief, what do you choose to believe about it? And what would happen if you stopped measuring your worth in something that isn’t even real?

The moment you see through the illusion, you will be free.

If you’re ready to go deeper into this shift, explore The UnBuy Project—a practical guide to living beyond the myth of money.