Creating Money

I’m reading another book called Future Smart by James Canton. It’s about what the future may bring and what you may need to be thinking of doing to prepare. Some of the things he predicts seems very obvious, like predicting that we will all be connected due to the Internet, social media and Internet of things. Then there are other predictions that seems obvious to me but may not be obvious to others because they don’t read or listen to what is going on: for example, the growth of megacities. For the most part, I don’t think he is saying anything really surprising if you are the kind who reads a lot; it is just good to have those futuristic theories all in one place rather than spread out across the Internet.

All in all, the book is okay but he tends to repeat himself a lot. He’ll expound on one thing in one paragraph and then the following paragraph it’s…the same thing, except maybe he will paraphrase it. It’s like he doesn’t have a whole lot to say about these futuristic visions other than we will have tremendous opportunity, productivity will increase and overall wealth will increase. Hallelujah.

One future prospect he talks about, which confuses me, is the prospect of each person creating his own digital money. I’m pretty sure I read that each person will be able to design his own digital money. Sometimes it’s design and other times it’s create. I’m not sure I really understand what he was trying to say. I would think it would NOT be a good idea if each person could create (or design) his own money. I thought money is usually  created by the government and the government then stands behind the money so that there is credibility behind the money. Nobody would want your money if it didn’t have value, meaning such paper and coinage you received from elsewhere had value because other people would allow you to buy their goods with such paper or coinage. If you couldn’t use that money you received to buy things elsewhere, you would not want to receive such money. There would be no trust in it. So I don’t think people could just create their own money because they would not be able to use it. They may or may not be able to design their money, which is a different concept from create, but I’m not sure why you would want to design it. I’m missing something here. What increased value would you get for designing your money (I’m assuming the government then gives you the money that you have already earned but that such money will be in your design?) I just don’t get the point of designing your own money.