The Social Construct Of Money

Even if the physical objects typically used as currency or used to create currency, such as metals in the case of coins and cotton in the case of paper bills, do not require any human action to form naturally, the use of those materials for the purpose of economic exchanges is merely a construct of human interaction.  As such, economics is often arbitrary precisely because it is constructed by human societies; economics is not a set of logical or scientific laws discovered by humans, even though the laws of logic govern economics just as they do all things.

Rather, economics is primarily about sociological phenomena--that is, phenonena shaped by human activities and conventions.  Without humans (or some other kind of social species), there is no such thing as an economy to begin with.  Physical materials that can be converted into currency or goods for which currency is exchanged may not be created by humans, but economic classes, norms, and exchanges certainly are.  This has crucial ramifications for what it means to rationally understand the importance of economics as a whole.

A social construct is created for at least one of only a handful of possible reasons.  People often make constructs either out of sheer stupidity (such as when people equate personality traits with the purely physical nature of gender in the name of "gender roles") or necessity (as is the case with economic systems).  Although humans are clearly capable of generous giving, it is not Biblically obligatory or even inherently sustainable for everyone to be freely given what they need or want in all cases, and economic systems allow or restrict the various exchanges that convince one party to give something to the other party.

Since money is a construct that is first and foremost used to facilitate survival and the satisfaction of practical needs, economics lacks the same degree of importance as philosophical matters like epistemology, metaphysics, and morality.  Money might be an integral part of human life, but it is far from the most significant thing one could live for.  Social constructs do not share the higher nature of that which transcends the practical.  Thus, there are always things that deserve more attention and a higher philosophical regard.

Whoever devotes their life to money for the sake of money has squandered their life precisely because money is simply a social construct.  A human construct has nothing more than practical value, as there is nothing more fundamental or metaphysically important which such a construct corresponds to than mere convenience or survival.  It is not that money has no philosophical significance beyond practicality [1], but that its significance is at best lesser than that of many other aspects of human life.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-philosophical-importance-of.html