ABSTRACT
That everything has to be paid for is a trite truism: the arguments arise over who pays whom for what, when and in which currency. The answers to those questions determine the processes for making the payments that are created by society. Most payments are made in money which is defined by fulfilling three basic functions:
a medium of exchange in which one person pays another for a good or service;
a common unit of account, enabling the values of goods and services to be summed;
a store of value representing either savings or debts.
Exchange, namely buying and selling, implies personal ownership: a good may only be rightfully sold by the owner and buyers may only become owners themselves through a legal transaction. It was a problem resolved in very early economies by assuming that everything belonged ultimately to the King, a personification of the state. Such absolute monarchs were often selected through a violent mixture of birth, inheritance and assassination, an inherently unstable, disruptive process which was gradually replaced by the democratic state, itself characterised by being a virtual, legal person able to own property, define the law, impose taxes and take actions in the citizens’ interests. Latterly, the principle of the state as a legal person has been extended to companies which have become virtual legal persons too. This has led logically to the notion that a company may indulge in a criminal act and be punished for it: Network Rail, a legal person, has been fined for breaches of safety regulations which, had they been committed by a real person, might well have resulted in a prison sentence.