Money is a Beer Bottle and Beer

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This is the sister piece to Money is a Bill and Dollars. The beer is easier to visualize than dollars.

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Money is a bill (store of value) and dollars (the value stored). In this piece the $100 bill is a 100 ounce beer bottle (eat your heart out Foster's) and the dollars is the beer.

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I'm going to split our typical understanding of the word money into two parts. For me and me only, this is money as beer bottles and beer:

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• A beer bottle is a store of value with a visible number, just like a bill

  • A beer bottle manufactured by government

  • The number on it is the ounces of beer it can contain

  • I'll use BB100 as a beer bottle that can hold 100 ounces of beer

  • The number on the bottle doesn't change over time

• Beer is the value in the bottle that's also visible, unlike dollars in a bill

  • The thing that actually buys stuff

  • The thing created only by labor

  • The amount of beer changes over time due to inflation

 

Let's say we're used to looking at a beer bottle with BB100 printed on it. What that tells you is incomplete because what that BB and number implies is more and more false over time. There's a difference between BB100 (the store of value) and ounces of beer (the value it contains).

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A BB100 bottle is only half of what's money, it's only the store of value part. The value it stores is in beer, and is typically a number that's smaller than what's printed on the bottle. To illustrate this, see Inflation - More Beer Bottles Than Beer.

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When I use the word "money" I mean the bottle and the beer it contains. When I use the word "bottle" I mean the store of value and not the value it contains. When I use the word "beer" I mean the value the bottle (store of value) contains, regardless of the number printed on the bottle.

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Just a fellow American