@builderofcastles,

BUT, when the community becomes larger than 100-300 people, you can't keep track. And so money is used as markers to the sharing.

Prescient point. It's called Dunbar's Number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Over it, groups start to require police forces, courts and other institutions of state. And ... money.

Imagine you own a Mercedes that I want to buy, but I don't have any money. So, I offer to mow your lawn instead. The disparity in the value exchange means that I'll have to do a lot of mowing and, unless your back yard is the size of a hayfield, it will take years to pay off my debt. Worse, imagine that you live in a condo and don't have a lawn at all. Or, what if I'm a scofflaw? What if my lawnmower breaks and I don't have the money to repair it?

The terms and conditions of the transaction becomes so cumbersome that it makes commerce all-but-impossible. Now multiply this out for my buying meat from the butcher and shoes from the shoemaker. This is why barter doesn't work for anything but the simplest of transactions.

Now imagine that you're the CEO of Daimler-Benz, the manufacturer of Mercedes automobiles. You've got thousands of suppliers and millions of customers in over 100 countries. Without a universally accepted unit of exchange (money) to act as an intermediary between parties, how could you ever orchestrate who owes who what? You couldn't, it would be a nightmare.

Now recall that there are millions of companies worldwide.

The "concept of money" was one of the greatest inventions of mankind as it allowed the value of labor and resources to be divorced from individuals, and created an abstract method of "value transfer" that was independent of space and time.

Money, in whatever form, is going nowhere.

Quill