Preamble

Survival depends upon survival factors.

Every survival factor has to be produced by someone.
(An individual, an information, an aquifer are a potential, a resource; running water is a product.)

Every survival factor, potential or produced, has an exchange value.

Its exchange value is its acknowledged survival value.
(Factual and acknowledged survival value may differ due to viewpoints, considerations, evaluations, intentions.)

The exchange value of a product is its purchasing power.

Who is the owner of the purchasing power of a PRODUCT the moment that purchasing power is born? When and how is that purchasing power born?

Its owner is he or she who produced the PRODUCT; and it is born when its survival value is acknowledged by someone else.

Media of payment, money, are substitutes for actual valuable products, used to increase survival by facilitating and streamlining the exchange of such products.

Whatever the substitute for the actual valuable product, whatever the medium of payment or form of money…

Which product does that substitute represent, exactly? As any substitute is but an “I Owe You”, I Owe You… WHAT, exactly?

Furthermore, does the purchasing power of the substitute circulate instead, in addition, or in the absence of the purchasing power of the product?