1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged

3 : relative worth, utility, or importance

7 : something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable <sought material values instead of human values — W. H. Jones

all the above from Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

A basic premise for human life is the exchange of value. In every single word we communicate, even our desire to communicate at all, is based on a need for a value exchange. If we were not seeking to gain something from the other person, there would be no reason to speak in the first place. In fact one could argue, that much of the richness of human life, exists through the value that we experience subjectively.

While value in itself is the most intangible of phaenomena, in our western based society, value has through the use of currency, managed to become tangible. When we convert an emotion or a service into a currency transaction, we make it tangible and understandable at a very basic level. The risk of this is, that highly emotional value exchanges can suddenly be confused with a currency value exchange. For instance, the classic notion that you cannot buy love or friendship and how the involvement of a currency tends to complicate this.

The challenge for us today is that our society in its every seams, is dependent on tangible currency value. Though we in management books and lectures hear about soft values and not being rated on revenue performance but on living up to vision, mission and goals, the currency transaction lies behind almost any transaction. The currency is seen as an enabler, which is also it’s intended original purpose, but the level of enabling has risen to a level far beyond its original scope of purpose, when it becomes a purpose in it self.

Also, the system set in place, to grow currency, within today’s current financial market models, are based on artificially growing the currency beyond any relation to it’s real value.

This is illustrated nicely by example of the US federal reserve bank. This private bank, lends money to the american government, who puts it in the hands of its population and circulates it globally. Each dollar that leaves the dollar mint press, is when it leaves the building and enters circulation a symbol of debt. This is simply due to the Fed adding interest to each dollar. This means, that anyone who has a dollar, in principle owes one dollar plus interest to the Federal Reserve Bank. In short the system, from start to finish creates debt that will never be able to be paid back as there is no counter value present.

With the costs of the 2009 bailouts in our current financial crisis, this becomes apparent, when every single human on the planet on average is indebted with 20.000 dollars that they now owe to the system. These are paid back using interest and fee’s and printing more money, in this case dollars, with more interest, that can gather future income for the Fed. It’s problematic because we would never be able to pay the money back. In fact, calculations show, that if you added the value of all the debt in the world up, there are not enough assets and value to pay for the debt. The world is technically bankrupt.

We need to challenge our perceptions of value. Alternative currency systems such as LETS are already doing this, some more successful than other, though many have difficulties shaking the image that they are just a bunch of hippies trying to be different. Most LETS systems however are simple, but smart systems, where there is no interest in the system and the system is only maintained by a small fee, which has no influence on the value of the currency. LETS are in fact showing that there is a way back to the intended purpose of money, to be a value exchange enabler. Not a value in itself.

http://www.blog.deadseriously.com/