Money is not valuable, the goods and services available in the economy are valuable. Money measures the value of the valuable goods and services and facilitates the exchange of the valuable goods and services.
Even if what is being used as money is inherently valuable, such as gold or silver coins, the value of the coins has to be set higher by law than their intrinsic value if they are to serve as money. As soon as their value as money drops to their intrinsic value the coins are gold or silver, not money.
This is because money is always an agreement, a custom or a law. The sovereign, the law giver, issues the currency. If the ostensible sovereign is not issuing the currency then the true sovereign, who is issuing the currency, is hidden. Issuing the currency is the primary tool that the sovereign uses to create the conditions in which the people live.
The point is that the idea that the money is valuable in itself is a lie. It is a widely believed lie, it is an implemented lie, it is the lie that creates the conditions in which we live, it is the lie that creates the socially unjust and environmentally unsustainable world in which private interests continually trump public interests.
It is a lie because money is established by law, it is what one must use to trade if that trade is to be backed up by legally enforceable contracts. Money is a social contract, and a social contract, to be legitimate, must be just. The idea that your money can work for you is inaccurate because what is actually happening is that someone who needs money to live has to work for you. A law cannot, by its very nature, create money that is valuable in itself, it can only create something to represent the value of the goods and services that are valuable and serve as the means of exchange. Law has its basis in justice, and using legally created money to create all the injustices to which we, the people are subject is simply unjust and wrong. You could even say that money making money is the root of all evil.
Once we grasp that money making money, or letting your money work for you, is a lie, then we can go about designing a monetary system in which the money is the servant of the people, not the master. A monetary system based on an understanding of money as an accounting system that serves justice will give us a just and sustainable abundance.
If we conceive of money as an accounting system then we would make rules for the accounting system that would account for all the externalized costs.
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