"... And one of the reasons that our technology is impeded
and prevented from feeding the world properly is the failure
of one of our networks. It's an information network and it's
called money, about which we have the most unbelievable
superstitions and psychological blocks which have been gone
into at some length by Freud who equates our valuation of money
with our attitude to excrement and a very complicated lot of
complexes grow up around that. But money and our psychological
attitude to money is a major obstacle to a proper development
of technology enabling it to do what it is supposed to do - that is
to save labor, and to produce goods, services, and so on adequately.
So I must introduce this with a story which is entirely legendary,
indeed quite apocryphal.

  'The great banks of the world at one time got absolutely sick of
   the expense and security measures involved in shipping consignments
   of gold from one bank to another and so they decided that all the
   chief banks of the world would open offices on a certain island
   in the South Pacific which was balmy and comfortable and there they
   would store all the gold in the world. And they put it in great
   subterranean vaults reached by deep elevator shafts and then all
   they had to do when one bank, one country, owed gold to another was
   to trundle it across the street. And this was very efficient. It went
   on beautifully for five or six years. And then the presidents of the
   world banks got together and said, "Let's have a convention out on
   this island and take our wives and families.”

   So about seven years from the date of opening, all those presidents
   and their wives and families went out to this Pacific island and they
   inspected the books. And everything was beautifully in order. Then
   the children said, "Oh Daddy can't we see the gold?"
   They said, "Of course you may see the gold." And they said to the
   managers, "Let's take our children down to the vaults and show them
   the gold."And the manager said, "Well it's a... it's a little bit
   inconvenient at this time and perhaps the children would not really
   be very interested, after all it's just only old plain gold." And the
   president said, "Oh no, no, come now, they'd be thrilled. Let's go down
   and see."And there was further humming and hawing and delays and finally
   it came out that a few years before there had been a catastrophic
   subterranean earthquake and all the vaults had been swallowed up and all
   the gold had disappeared.

   But so far as the book keeping was concerned everything was in perfect order.'

What this means then is that money is nothing but bookkeeping. It is figures.
It is a way of measuring what you owe the community and what the community
owes you...."

                                                            Alan Watts