Maybe he's giving a question purpose, lol.
I'm purposing this stick as a poking device.
I'm purposing my fingers to type right now.

The possibilities are endless...

Anyway, I'm done here, good luck with the currency. I leave you with some extra information: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp

Hey, I'll buy iron off of you for some emeralds, no problem. I trust you.

But then what?

@Derndeff Anyway, if you believe heavily in the emerald system, why don't you start selling items for emeralds? You know roughly what they're worth, so why not start using it as a currency?

People will set up shops the way that benefits them. A poll isn't going to change this.

I still don't see the problem here. If you want something in Minecraft, either make it, find it, or barter for it. Emeralds are deemed worthless by everyone because they are currently worthless. It will become a currency if you find people who agree it's a currency.

I do not see any value in emeralds, because I can do nothing with them. If someone was selling something I wanted in emeralds, I would find them valuable.

I personally find value in diamonds and iron, and will trade with them.

If someone is selling something you want, either get the resources to buy it or barter for the resources to buy it. :l

Well, I can think of some very powerful political manipulation that used afterlife as an incentive and threat, but it probably first started with humans being optimistic when trying to explain what happens after death.

On the anarchy statement, I just mean that there is no government in the sense of regulation and restrictions (aside from obvious unfair play like hacking, scamming, etc.).

But yeah, I forgot about the rough conversions that can be done through villagers, so good point.
The emerald currency will still collapse, though.

Anyone who doesn't have an emerald/diamond exchange system through villagers should not trust using emeralds as a valued currency. (and players will not trust this. I won't, anyway) One way you could fix this is by having an emerald/diamond exchange system that is static, either done at spawn or by a trusted player.

But then you have the exact same issue. An emerald is just a diamond, and diamonds have a seemingly unstable value. (or at least that's the argument, right?)

Anyway, if you believe heavily in the emerald system, why don't you start selling items for emeralds? You know roughly what they're worth, so why not start using it as a currency?

Back on the core topic of the thread, the only way to have a working currency system is to use something that has practically no value (like emeralds), but there would need to be an agreement among a majority of suppliers of how much an emerald is worth to start out with. However, this "system" would quickly collapse from the lack of trust present in anarchy.

People won't *trust* that an emerald is worth anything, so they won't trade their valuables for something that has no real value.

The emerald currency would almost instantly collapse without some kind of enforcement from a government. And CraftyMynes will never have a server-wide government.
(Note that you could in theory form your own government and create your own currency, but that's not what's being discussed here)

A "soul" is just a side-effect that was created when evolution began favoring intelligence. Rather than simply reacting directly to inputs received, animals analyze their inputs and make a decision to form their outputs. That analysis is what we perceive as consciousness.

Imo, there isn't really a "purpose," it's just the only way thoughts and decisions can be carried out. For some reason, as brains became more complex, emotions and feelings formed to change the path of decision-making to benefit the animal and produce more offspring.

Everything is different now for humans, of course, because we became intelligent enough to form a society that GREATLY benefits the human species. Now we have no evolutionary purpose for emotions and feelings in most cases.

We're intelligent enough as humans to understand what emotions "are," and we're confused by this.
Something like a dog, however, does not care about "why" and "how," and just knows that it feels good to do certain things, and it feels bad to do other things, and changes its decision-making accordingly.