The Hierarchy of Money

Money. The villagers are tired of bartering. The dairy farmer wants to buy corn, even when he does not have milk to trade, and the corn farmer wants to buy meat, even when the butcher does not want corn. So they decide that special gray stones that they can collect from a nearby riverbed will represent an abstract unit of value, called money . They reason that if everyone uses stones to represent value, then people can transact when they would like, rather than when both parties are willing and able to barter. The villagers have abstracted value.