The irony is that the need to find a physical material representation for social values led to the adoption of an unimpeachable metallic base (gold and silver) for money that was so dysfunctional for daily use that it required symbolic representation of itself (paper and electronic moneys) to be effective. The symbolic moneys gradually became more dominant as trading expanded. Cutting out the metallic base in the early 1970s produced two symbolic systems--value and money--side by side in an awkward dialectical embrace.