It is interesting to discuss what is REAL money
Real money is what many people accept as real money in exchange for goods and services.
It doesn't matter what is its form, who created it, how many there is of it. As long as enough people believe it is real money, it IS real money.
Many people thought that their bitcoins on MTGOX are real, since they could sell them for fiat and use fiat to buy them on MTGOX. But as long as they don't withdraw, those bitcoins are just numbers on MTGOX's database
It was real money until it wasn't any more

There's no guarantee that anything that is "real money" at moment t0, is still real money at moment t1.
Real money is a kind of "speculative lock-in", a kind of meta-stable situation, which can last for centuries, or just for a week.
Indeed, this back to the question of prefer to live in a dream world or real world. Most of the people live in a world that they believe it is
I think it is all related to the perspective: From personal and short term perspective, it does not really matter. But from a nation's or long term perspective, removing the parasite and cancer will definitely help to improve the financial health of everyone
But it is not easy to escape, people were deeply trapped in this cancer from the day when they were born. The removal of it will likely kill everyone's financial life that is dependent on it