Quote:
Originally Posted by Bibio
five pounds of what????? cow muck, boiled sweets.....
|
Ah, right, you mean the philosophical consideration of what is exchange or payment. The pound sterling is just an accounting unit, apparently dating from the 8th or 9th century Anglo Saxon ages being equivalent to 240 silver pennies, so in essence originating as an amount of precious metal. If we use tokens for exchange of "value" it has to be a widely accepted stable item so that everyone can rate their produce against it. Of course now we don't even hold the tokens, they are just a figment of an accountants imagination, not even a number on paper, just a binary code in a memory somewhere.
So it's five pounds "worth" of value, however that is currently defined, not five pounds "of" anything.