920
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Since January 1, 2014
- A History of the World since 1300 (67)
- History of Rock, 1970-Present (50)
- A Brief History of Humankind (48)
- The Modern World: Global History since 1760 (35)
- Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science (33)
- The Bible's Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future (28)
- Introduction aux éthiques philosophiques (27)
- Roman Architecture (25)
- Jesus in Scripture and Tradition (25)
- Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender (23)
- Descubriendo la pintura europea de 1400 a 1800 (22)
- Introduction aux droits de l'homme (19)
- Buddhism and Modern Psychology (18)
- Calvin: Histoire et réception d'une Réforme (17)
- The Ancient Greeks (16)
- The French Revolution (15)
- À la découverte du théâtre classique français (15)
- Christianisme et philosophie dans l'Antiquité (14)
- Key Constitutional Concepts and Supreme Court Cases (14)
- Letters of the Apostle Paul (14)
- Egiptología (12)
- Western Music History through Performance (10)
- Phenomenology and the Conscious Mind (9)
- Human Evolution: Past and Future (9)
- Greek and Roman Mythology (9)
- Alexander the Great (9)
- The Great War and Modern Philosophy (9)
- The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture (9)
- Villes africaines: la planification urbaine (8)
- Masterpieces of World Literature (8)
- Programming Mobile Applications for Android (7)
- Introduction to Psychology (7)
- Fundamentos de la escritura en español (7)
- MongoDB for Node.js Developers (7)
- Pensamiento Científico (7)
- Greeks at War: Homer at Troy (7)
- Lingua e cultura italiana: avanzata (6)
- A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior (6)
- The Emergence of the Modern Middle East (6)
- Reason and Persuasion Through Plato's Dialogues (6)
- Fake News, Facts, and Alternative Facts (6)
- Karl der Große - Pater Europae (6)
- The Rooseveltian Century (6)
- Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (5)
- Dinosaur Paleobiology (5)
- Understanding Einstein: The Special Theory of Relativity (5)
- L'avenir de la décision : connaître et agir en complexité (5)
- Designing Cities (4)
- Problèmes métaphysiques à l'épreuve de la politique, 1943-1968 (4)
- The Kennedy Half Century (4)
- Introduction to Public Speaking (4)
- Emergence of Life (4)
- War for the Greater Middle East (4)
- Postwar Abstract Painting (3)
- Découvrir l'anthropologie (3)
- Analyzing the Universe (3)
- The Music of the Beatles (3)
- La visione del mondo della Relatività e della Meccanica Quantistica (3)
- Initiation à la programmation en Java (3)
- Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life (3)
- History of Rock and Roll, Part One (3)
- La Commedia di Dante (3)
- Devenir entrepreneur du changement (3)
- Moons of Our Solar System (3)
- Orientierung Geschichte (3)
- Paleontology: Early Vertebrate Evolution (3)
- Western Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Europe (3)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (2)
- L'art des structures 1 : Câbles et arcs (2)
- Art History for Artists, Animators and Gamers (2)
- Introduction to Classical Music (2)
- Galaxies and Cosmology (2)
- The Science of Gastronomy (2)
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem (2)
- Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity (2)
- Philosophy and the Sciences (2)
- Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication (2)
- The European Discovery of China (2)
- Our Earth: Its Climate, History, and Processes (2)
- Découvrir la science politique (2)
- Introduction à la programmation en C++ (2)
- Introduction à la philosophie de Friedrich Nietzsche (2)
- Géopolitique de l'Europe (2)
- Gestion des aires protégées en Afrique (2)
- Lingua e letteratura in italiano (2)
- The Changing Landscape of Ancient Rome (2)
- Materials Science: 10 Things Every Engineer Should Know (2)
- Highlights of Modern Astronomy (2)
- La Philanthropie : Comprendre et Agir (2)
- The Science of Religion (2)
- Advertising and Society (1)
- America Through Foreign Eyes (1)
- Superpowers of the Ancient World: the Near East (1)
- The Art of Poetry (1)
- Bemerkenswerte Menschen (1)
- Big History: From the Big Bang until Today (1)
- Controversies of British Imperialism (1)
- Age of Cathedrals (1)
- Christianity: From Persecuted Faith to Global Religion (200-1650) (1)
- Narratives of Nonviolence in the American Civil Rights Movement (1)
- Constitutional Law - The Structure of Government (1)
- Contagious: How Things Catch On (1)
- Care of Elders with Alzheimer's Disease (1)
- The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art (1)
- Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems (1)
- Animal Behaviour (1)
- From the Big Bang to Dark Energy (1)
- Configuring the World (1)
- Introduction to Data Science (1)
- Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society (1)
- The Law of the European Union (1)
- 21st Century American Foreign Policy (1)
- Éléments de Géomatique (1)
- History and Future of Higher Education (1)
- The Age of Jefferson (1)
- The Magna Carta and its Legacy (1)
- A New History for a New China, 1700-2000 (1)
- The New Nordic Diet (1)
- A la recherche du Grand Paris (1)
- What Managers Can Learn from Great Philosophers (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1)
- Exercise Physiology: Understanding the Athlete Within (1)
- Physique générale - mécanique (1)
- Subsistence Marketplaces (1)
- Practicing Tolerance in a Religious Society (1)
- Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (1)
- Andy Warhol (1)
- Web Intelligence and Big Data (1)
- Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (1)
- Learning How to Learn (1)
- Imagining Other Earths (1)
- Vital Signs: Understanding What the Body Is Telling Us (1)
- Développement durable (1)
- Dinosaur Ecosystems (1)
- The Civil War and Reconstruction (1)
- Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance (1)
- Introducción a la genética y la evolución (1)
- Poetry in America: Whitman (1)
- Anthropology of Current World Issues (1)
- Escribir para Convencer (1)
- Découvrir le marketing (1)
- Créer et développer une startup technologique (1)
- Frontières en tous genres (1)
- Une introduction à la géographicité (1)
- Gestion et Politique de l'eau (1)
- Theater and Globalization (1)
- Handel’s Messiah and Baroque Oratorio (1)
- Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1)
- From Goddard to Apollo: The History of Rockets (1)
- Miracles of Human Language (1)
- Human Origins (1)
- The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (1)
- Intellectual Humility (1)
- Introduction to Italian Opera (1)
- Magic in the Middle Ages (1)
- Making Sense of News (1)
- Introduction to Mathematical Thinking (1)
- Mobilité et urbanisme (1)
- Moral Foundations of Politics (1)
- Mountains 101 (1)
- The Biology of Music (1)
- Oriental Beliefs: Between Reason and Traditions (1)
- In the Night Sky: Orion (1)
- Visualizing Postwar Tokyo (1)
- The Renaissance and Baroque City (1)
- The Rise of China (1)
- Russian History: from Lenin to Putin (1)
- Социокультурные аспекты социальной робототехники (1)
- Science of Exercise (1)
- El Mediterráneo del Renacimiento a la Ilustración (1)
- Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1)
- The World of the String Quartet (1)
- Switzerland in Europe (1)
- The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction (1)
- William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place (1)
- Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis (1)
- The World of Wine (1)
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:




Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:
Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
Notes on video lecture:
The Essence of Money
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on November 6, 2013 (go to class or lectures)


Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
empires, seashells, complex, bits, favors, subjective, barter, cigarettes, health, villages, technological, coral, Uganda, exchange, 5000, Africa
three main forces that drove humans to unify: money, , and universal religions
the history of money
hunters and gathers had no money
each band hunted, gathered, and manufactured almost everything it needed
they didn't buy and sell anything
some members had skills that others did not but they lived in an economy of and obligations
e.g. boot repair from one person who can make boots
some items needed to be obtained from other bands, but this could be done by simple barter
e.g. for flint
the agricultural revolutions in the beginning changed very little in these arrangements
most people continued to live in small communities
ancient villages self-sufficient with a little with outsiders
rise of cities years ago
brought about opportunities for people to specialize in doing just one thing well
professional shoemakers, carpenters, priests and soldiers
small did not offer enough market for people to only be a shoemaker, but cities offered this
in villages peasants began to specialize more and more
one village would produce mainly olive oil
based on geography: your area is not good for wheat but for olive trees
bartner could never form the basis of a economy
you produce the best apples in the entire province
one day you need shoes
you take your best apples to get new shoes
problems:
1. too many rates
need to know how many apples equal a pair of shoes
with 100 commodities, 4950 exchange rates have to be known
1000 commodities, 499500 exchange rates need to be known
2. barter is not always possible
shoemaker may not need apples when you need shoes, he may need medical car
three and four-way transactions become to complex
the solution to barter which led to complex economies was the invention and development of money
money was developed many times and in many places in history
money required no breakthrough, it was a purely mental and psychological revolution
the creation of money simply meant the creation of a new inter- reality, something that many people believe in together (that specific paper and coins have a specific worth)
money is not coins and money is not bank notes
money is anything that people are willing to us in order to represent the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services
the value of money depends on our imagination, not on the worth of the material from which money is made
there have been many types of money
for us the most standard type of money is a metal coin and a paper bill
but money existed long before the invention of the first coins or bills
many cultures had complex economies without coins or bills, e.g. shells, cattle hide, grain, beads, clothes
coral shells were used as money all over , South Asia, East Asia and Oceania
even in the early 20th century in , then part of the British Empire, you could still pay taxes with coral shells
in Chinese script, the initial sign for money was the sign of the shell
in prisons, money often thrives in the form of , and is accepted currency even for prisoners who do not smoke since they know they can trade them for good and services among the prisoners
in fact, coins and bank notes has become a very rare form of money
most of the economic activity done today is not done with coins and bank notes
in 2006, the sum total of money in the world was estimated at about $473 trillion, today it is somewhere in excess of $500 trillion
yet if you take the sum total of all the coins and bank notes in the world, they are worth only about $50 trillion, so only about 10% of the money exists as physical cash whereas $450 trillion exists only on computer servers
the overwhelming majority of money today exists as electronic bits which we move from here to there
most business transactions today are done by moving electronic data, which is the dominant form of money today
if everyone at one time were to go to the bank and demand to have their money in the shape of bills and coins, banks would collapse, since there are not enough coins and bills to do that
we still hear in the news about governments printing money, but they often don't really print the paper bills or create coins, what actually happens is e.g. the Chief of the Federal Bank in the United States goes to a computer and where there is a number $50,000,000, he changes the first zero to a two and, hocus pocus, it now says $52,000,000. This is how money is printed today.
as long as people are willing to exchange goods and services for moving from one place to another, this is perfectly valid money
in order to have complex markets, you must have money, since money enables you to tell the relative value of goods and services in the market
the most basic quality of money is that everybody always wants it, and the reason they want it is because everybody else wants it, since when you have money, you can exchange it for anything you like
money is a universal medium of exchange that allows you to convert almost anything into almost anything else, e.g. with money, you can transform money into shoes, or more abstract entities such as transforming into justice, e.g. a doctor treats someone illness, then takes the money and hires a lawyer for some issue
money can also be stored and transported easily