Well, perhaps the ideal start is from a fictional past example: I look for poultry, you have them but I have nothing to trade you want; you want a knife. Now a neighbor have a spare knife but again nothing that I can trade is interested for him/her, while another neighbor let's say want shoes, I have them, and trade shoes with ceramic, the other with the knife want ceramic so we can manage such 4 party exchange. Such system does not work much, it's too complicated finding matching objects in the neighborhood for any exchange.

So we invented a symbol, money, we all agree to accept and start saying "hey, for my chicken I want 10 coins, for my shoes 30, ... we can all exchange coins for anything else and the volume of exchanges makes "the right price" of anything, more or less, depending on various factors, like scarcity vs abundance.

Such simple system work well enough, have issues like how to choose a symbol no one can temper easily because if I can produce coins in my backyard I destroy the system for instance etc. Such issues can be solved by a public authority who decide an initial quantity of money, distribute it with commonly agreed criteria, check it's authenticity etc. Such authority MUST be public because MUST been unable to make profit from that money making/handling. Being public have no profit to make, those who work for such institution can't do that in disguise, their money is public, they can't have personal interests involved etc. They must be civil servant like in the ancient Athens where the police was made by slaves, they know if they act well they can live a good life, if not they are dead. Similar things happen in various European cities where the elected government must be formed of strangers checked for any absence of conflicting interests but rewarded enough for their role if they openly perform well.

Again, not perfect but work. Profit, A BIT of, is now a weapon to push people to act a bit avoiding the classic "if you get paid for doing nothing you'll do nothing" and similarly avoid those who decide to live with a purpose because we have various cohort of "people" in the sense that there are the very active who work "too much" ruining lives around them, disturbing a calm evolution of the society etc and we have people who do not want to do anything at all, various others in between etc. Being as society we need to find a best possible place for anyone because that's why we make a society in the first place, and we can bend attitudes a bit, but not more than a bit. In such democratic fictional society we need to pursue the common good without being against personal interests nor individual attitudes. The Roman's said "In medio stat virtus" (in the mean lie the virtue), the Swedes have invented the Lagom concept witch happen to be essentially the same etc. We need a bit of push to profit to avoid stagnation and dispersion but we need to limit it to avoid derailments where people start to live to work instead of the contrary.

Actually money are not like that: EU central bank is formed by EU States central banks witch in turn are formed by the biggest private banks and insurances of their relevant countries, the USA FED is equally a private institution bolted to the public government in an old scam. Only few States have public central banks but such states tend to be dictatorships not Democracies so again the public is the private game of the ruler... Money actually are lent to the public for an interest rate that can't mathematically be paid except if you borrow foreign money so money now is debt. Being the thing anyone want money is not The Value, the substrate of anything.

States need taxes NOT to redistribute richness ensuring a narrow enough fork between richest and poorest for the common welfare but to finance their operations etc. The entire economy is a classic scam due to this absurd distortion at the economy atom. Profit is not anymore producing something good and so get rewarded, being able to buy more, but harvesting money from others etc such system can only end if we agree that a society much be ruled by the people, a Democracy, not a classic Aristocracy, nor a modern Corporato-Timocracy nor something lead "by leaders inn disguise who direct the flock of people" (cfr. Gustave le Bon, Eduard Bernays, ...) like the neoliberal society of today.

I do not know how to make that happen, I do not know how it happen in the past, all I know is how to maintain it witch is the "in medio stat virtus" at any level, richness, welfare, culture etc...