The radio program On The Media had a fascinating episode on money: what it is, how it came to be, why it has value, and what its purpose is. It started with a story of someone I had not heard of before, an artist named J. S. G. Boggs, who made detailed drawings of currency notes with some slight imperfections deliberately inserted, and then exchanged those notes for goods with people who accepted them at face value as a work of art and even gave him change in regular currency, knowing that they were not notes issued by the government.
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