I would like to share some views from the author;
Ideal types of money enable people not merely to turn one thing into another, but to store wealth as well. Many valuables cannot be stored- such as time or beauty.
Because money can convert, store and transport wealth easily and cheaply, it made a vital contribution to the appearance of complex commercial networks and dynamic markets. Without money, commercial networks and markets would have been doomed to remain very limited in their size, complexity and dynamism.
Money is a accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.
Initially, when the first versions of money were created, people didn't have this sort of trust, so it was necessary to define as“money” things that had real intrinsic value.
Christians and Muslims who could not agree on religious beliefs could nevertheless agree on a monetary belief, because whereas religion asked us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.
For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. Money is more open-minded than language, state laws, culture codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don't know each others and don't trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.
（此时此刻只有一个想法;thanks to money~）
Money is based on two universal principles; a Universal convertibility; with money as an alchemist, you can turn land into loyalty, justic into health, and violence into knowledge; b, Universal trust; with money as a go-between, any two people can cooperate on any project.
（简直万能…）
These principles have enabled millions of strangers to cooperate effectively in trade and industry. But these seemingly benign principles have dark side. When everything is convertible, and when trust depends on anonymous coins and cowry shells, it corrodes local traditions ,intimate relations and human values, replacing them with the cold laws of supply and demands.
Human communities and families have always been based on belief in“priceless” things, such as honour, loyalty, morality and love. These things lie outside the domain of the market, and they shouldn't be bought or sold for money. Even if the market offers a good price, certain things just aren't done.
（理论上是这样，事实上在money发展速度惊人的情况下也存在很大一部分以money为基准和基础，像loyalty, honour, morality, love, 这些在现实生活中貌似都能被金钱所折服，而我们之所以作为一个人，也正是因为有类似于love之类的存在吧。外面的世界怎样都好，都要心存美好呀~ dare to know, dare to live, dare to love~）
Money has an even darker side. For although money builds universal trust between strangers, this trust is invested not in humans, communities or sacred values, but in money itself and in the impersonal systems that back it. We do.not trust the stranger, or the next-door neighbour- we trust the coin they hold. If they run out of coins, we run out of trust. As money brings down the dams of community, religion and state, the world is in danger of becoming one big and rather heartless marketplace.
People rely on money to facilitate cooperation with strangers, but they're afraid it will corrupt human values and intimate relation.
In order to understand how thousands of isolated cultures coalesced over time to form the global village of today, we must take into account the role of gold and silver, but we cannot disregard the equally crucial role of steel.