Money is simply a tool. We use money as a proxy for our time and labor—our life energy—to acquire things that we cannot (or care not to) procure or produce with our own hands. Beyond that, it has limited actual utility: you can’t eat it; if you bury it in the ground, it will not produce a crop to sustain a family; it would make a lousy roof and a poor blanket. To base our understanding of economy simply on money overlooks all other methods of exchange that can empower communities. Equating an economy only with money assumes there are no other means by which we can provide food for our bellies, a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs. Further, when we assume that money is the only means by which we can accomplish these things, then our economy serves only those people who possess it. It does not value the regenerative work that must be done in order to provide the resources that every soul, human and nonhuman, needs to live.
Shannon Hayes
Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture
