Then again, there are things I wouldn't do for love nor money

I've been posting elsewhere on occasion, and thought I'd repost some of my more interesting work here. This is from some time back, in response to someone who opined that money was evil, and couldn't we all just get along on love, instead?

Money is one of the greatest inventions in human history, ranking right up there with fire and irrigation and textiles.

Money lets you store value over time in a way that isn't subject to going bad or being consumed like some commodity might.

Money lets you do your bartering half a transaction at a time, and in a fractional way. That is, instead of having to amass enough bread loaves to trade for a whole cow or some such silly thing, you can do just half the barter with one set of people, trading your bread loaves for money, and then later doing another half-barter with some other people, trading your money for just the part of a cow you care about, say, enough to make burgers with. Money is required for there to be a market. In simple terms, without money, there would be no grocery stores.

Money lets you take part in transactions that are far away, without having to worry about schlepping your stuff back and forth. Money makes it so you don't have to keep mental track of an encyclopedia's worth of exchange rates from one kind of good to another.

Money lets you express the amount you value something very precisely, letting you keep the amount of value you might have to round by in a barter exchange in your wallet instead. As a result, money makes you wealthier.

Money lets you engage in complicated transactions that take place over extended periods, like mortgages and bonds, and makes it possible to be a fractional owner of a business and be paid a proportional dividend from the profits. That means lots of people can live in houses while paying for them, instead of trying to come up with some way of amassing enough stuff to trade for a house all at once, and people can join together to make a really big business, say, building ships or skyscrapers or something, that no individuals could pull off by themselves.

Money makes large public works possible, because it's impractical to turn a tax collected in labor or goods into the kinds of labor and goods needed for roads and bridges and canals. Money makes tax collection fairer, since it can be figured in the same terms for everyone.

You may do the work you do for love, and you may love the people you know, but love is a pretty poor substitute for money, especially when most people can't love you because they don't even know you and don't have the time or the emotional wherewithal to care about every person they come in contact with. Love doesn't let you express how what you value compares to what someone else values, whereas money does that perfectly. And when it comes to a material exchange, money is the perfect medium and measure for that comparison of values.

Is that enough material for your essay for class?

This blogging thing: Everybody's doing it, so I figured I'd better join in.