Art of Exchange

Few days back when I was walking along the famous Renganathan Street, T.Nagar I saw people scurrying past the road holding onto some stuff or other in their hand. The stuffs were from old age broomstick to groceries to toys to whatever one can imagine. The stuffs which didn’t belong to them few minutes back now belonged to them. The way they hold on to the stuffs that they have bought using Money conveys a definite meaning to onlookers.
"Hey this stuff is mine. Don’t even think about touching it"
In the above sentence the word "mine" is very powerful. This is responsible for most if not all the problems in the world.
"This is mine" tell this aloud you will get a weird good feeling.
By exchanging few papers they buy stuffs which were not created by them, which they could never imagine to create. The greatest process man has created in my view is the art of exchange.
If we sit on a time machine and go back to the days of Adam and Eve, it is difficult to contemplate if they would have had the feeling "mine" also it is difficult to comprehend that they would be familiar with the art of exchange. If Adam got an apple Eve can get two because things were in abundance. And most important of all they never had any great requirement other than what they needed to survive. Everything that was there belonged to them. They would not have felt to own anything as there was no one else to own them. There is a small chance that among Adam and Even they would have had the "this is mine" feeling but it wouldn't have been as predominant as it is today.

But as times changed Ram was capable of creating X. Shyam was capable of creating Y. But Ram wanted Y and Shyam wanted X so there came the concept of exchange.
Things were exchanged to get other things. Rice was exchanged to get wheat. Though this is still practised worldwide, Money plays major role in most of the transactions.
Man has evolved the concept of exchange beautifully with the invention of "Money". He has been successful in making "Money" as the universal transaction medium. He has been successful in giving specific value to different denominations on Money, different value to different currencies.
Imagine how much effort and thought should have gone through this before we have the system we have now. And most important of the entire whole world should accept it. In a society where it is difficult to convince our peer about our proposed solution it is definitely a T-Rex effort.
When I was a child when people used to say America is the richest country I used to think why India doesn’t print enough money so that India can also become rich. That’s the knowledge I had about Money and till now the concept of GDP is beyond the reach of my small brain.
Man values each service or product in terms of money. All human effort is valued in terms of money.
To dig a pit it is X amount. To draw a painting it will cost Y amount. To develop software it will cost Z amount.
If we compare the activities it is difficult to understand how the equivalent money values were arrived because there are infinite numbers of things that can govern the final value for any work. But still Man has achieved it. Whether the end result is right or wrong we don’t know.

But are we ready to start from the scratch? No way, we have more important things to take care of.

From the protests that happen whenever a WTO meeting is organised, from the sight of posh bungalows and ugly slums we can understand there is something wrong somewhere. But we leave the problems to the big guys to find a solution. We carry on with our mundane work.
The next time when you pay to get a service or buy a product just remember you are actually in the core of a very complex process web which drives the whole world.