Alan Watts, the British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience, explains here that the illusion of money's worth is causing great confusion and unnecessary suffering.
The machines were supposed to liberate humanity. Instead they enslaved us. More and more useless things had to be produced and purchased, for the system to keep running... and enslaving us.
"The public has to be provided with the means of purchasing what the machines produce" he says. In our times it is known as massive, unrelenting credit card debt.
The more we work just for money, and believe in paper money, the worse it is.
He speaks of the Great Depression here: "Suddenly because of a psychological hang up, because of a mysterious mumbo-jumbo about the economy, about the banking - we were all miserable and poor, starving in the midst of plenty."