Quote from: stan.distortion on January 27, 2015, 11:58:10 AM

Quote from: mirelo on January 27, 2015, 11:30:33 AM

Quote from: johnyj on January 27, 2015, 08:57:52 AM

Quote from: mirelo on January 27, 2015, 05:21:31 AM

Quote from: johnyj on January 27, 2015, 02:25:59 AM

Money is just a certificate of value, and there is a consensus for that value among a group of people

A ten-dollar bill cannot certify that something priced at ten dollars indeed has this (or any other) value, so it makes no sense to define money as "a certificate of value."

There is no standard unit of value, it is all subjective, but you can make a rough compare of things with different value: a $10 bill has 10 times larger value than a $1 bill

There is, of course, a standard unit of value: it is called money. You have just asserted that ten of those units are worth ten times more than one of them. Additionally, the price of anything you sell depends not only on your individual evaluation, but also on that of the buyer. So its value must become objective to both of you, precisely, as money.

Money has different values depending on the circumstances though, it has a lot higher value when you're struggling to make ends meet than when you've plenty to spare and that seems to be on a linear scale, when you've billions then throwing a few million at a market to push it around is trivial. Risk likely comes into it there and could be considered a currency in its own right.

The value of the money is formed individually and expressed in the market. Basically each actor compares two things at the time and decides what is best for him at that moment. A nickel or a coke. Maybe you (mirelo) confuse it with the unit of account. That is something that is chosen by a businessman, and the crucial traits are fungibility and divisibility. By the way, a 10 dollar bill is not exactly as valuable as 10 one dollar bills, that you will discover, if you go to a bank with truckloads of money, they will charge you for handling the notes.