Yes, that's right...and the money is likewise valuable only because people have long agreed that it was valuable. But it is a mere idea...a symbolic concept...unlike gold and silver which are real.

I agree that it's arbitrary (to some extent) to define gold and silver as "valuable", but they are real. Money isn't. It's a symbol of something that is real (labor).

Money is symbolic "work" that you can hold in your hand....work not yet done. You give it to someone who values it, and they then will do the work for you or they will trade you the results of the work for the money.

Imagine if you could create a huge amount of money at the tap of a computer key, millions of dollars worth, and lend it out to various people, and collect interest on it.

That's what the banks have been doing. That's a money tree, and it's a pyramid scheme. It can collapse, though, if enough of the debtors are simultaneously unable to pay off their debts.

Then the unreality of the magically created money that appeared out of thin air becomes clear, and the Ponzi scheme collapses.