We live in a modern society in which a significant amount of our transactions, if not all of them, we find that we use the coin of the realm to buy what we so desire to buy, and are suitably paid with that very same coin of the realm. In other words, money, translated simply, is the standardized medium that is utilized, in which each side typically values it essentially the same, and therefore are willing to trade their labor or their goods for that money ad nauseum. The fact that money is fungible, universally accepted, and for the most part, holds is value, makes it a very good way to transact business—thereby successfully circumventing the necessity of trying to determine the worth of someone else’s goods with some other tool that would somehow practically serve as a fair monetary unit. While it is true that mutual exchanges of goods are made, from time-to-time without any money exchanging hands, this is the exception, and not the rule, because most people and businesses, don’t desire to devote an endless amount of time to bargaining back and forth, when they can simply set a price and be done with it.
Many people believe that if they can only get their assets to a certain specific number, that all will be well for them, because in having those monetary assets, they would thus be safe and secure from the vagaries of what life might present to them. Regrettably, many a country, with barely any notice, has ended up debasing their currency or essentially have made such worthless, and virtually every country has some degree of inflation that thereby makes the worth of their money, degrade over an extended period of time. Therefore, it would be fair to state, that the value of money, changes, and can indeed change rather dramatically over very short periods of time. That said, though, pretty much those that do have a lot of monetary assets are almost always in a very good place to be.
However, as in any rule, there are exceptions, and in consideration that there are at a minimum, 900,000 islands in this world, it has to be stated that if a given person who has assets of millions upon millions of dollars was to find themselves somehow to be on a deserted island, with absolutely nothing, but those millions of dollars in cash, in their backpack, they would indeed be in that place in which having that money would be worthless. After all, picture being on that island with that money and of which there is no other person on that island, and no businesses upon that island; so that, there simply is then no logical way that the money could be spent or utilized to buy anything. That person, in one aspect, would still be rich, but rich in a way that would present no good for them, for the money on that deserted island would have no value or utility. So then, when it comes to money, recognize that this is best seen as a convenient medium of exchange, but to be defined by that coin of the realm, is a mistake, because that which has the most value, has no price upon it.