The dictionary definition of money is ‘a medium of exchange’ with the occasional qualifier ‘in the form of coins and banknotes’ but that doesn’t mean much beyond ‘it's what you take to the store and exchange for stuff you want.’ The definition doesn’t make money a fundamentally more understandable concept.
Opposite of spending, money is earned through work (also known as labor). From this vantage, money is a form of stored labor. There are other ways to store labor: the widgets produced by labor such as automobiles, toys, clothing, food… any product which involves the input of labor. But these items can be difficult to transport and store and depreciates (or degrades) at variable rates. So the advantages of being paid in money over widgets are obvious. To restate: labor = widgets = money.
A better definition of money: medium of exchange of labor.
One of the interesting insights of Daly and Farley's _Ecological Economics_ is that value comes not just from labor, but also comes in the form of natural resources. Following this, I wonder, would you consider extending the definition of money?
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