We talked about money. 

What is it?  The Anglo Saxons minted the penny from 1/240 of a pound of silver, so the coins had intrinsic value (and consequently were frequently clipped and debased.  The pound was linked to a gold standard in the early 1700’s and came off temporarily in WW1 and permanently in the great depression in 1931.  Now we hardly use hard currency and our money is on-line and ephemeral: according toto the Bank of England, when we use our credit card we actually create money, and we destroy it when we pay off the card.  The Bank of England does indirectly control the commercial banks through regulation and putting limits on how much they can lend and quantitative easing or tightening; and inflation through interest rates.  

Money does represent debt.  Its function is to give us freedom to buy what we want when we want it, rather than having to find and negotiate a satisfactory barter.  Money is thus a source of power, but it can be used to enslave those who don’t have it.  See the extract from Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”.  The need for money is acute and constant for the poor - but how much more do the super-rich need?  The acquisition of money has become a goal influencing our behaviours and beliefs.  This state of affairs lead no less a person than Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England to call for a reset in how we perceive “Value”, the title of his book reviewed in The Observer.