She never could resist a good talk of this kind, and finding an advertisement like this one is too good an opportunity to pass over. She's not planning to speak, per se, but she's never been good at not expressing her thoughts.

With a shadowy flicker, a slight gap is opened in space, enough for an iridescent eye to peek through. The eye surveys the room, hovering unobtrusively at a politely average eye level... and after it becomes obvious that the provided participation infrastructure is chair-based, they find themselves a suitable seat to hover over. The gap subtly widens, leaving a smear of blackness in its wake to hide the wormhole from the sight of those who might not be prepared to peer through higher-dimensional spaces, and a few tentacles emerge; a thin and dexterous tentacle to push the button as needed, a thick tentacle to visibly coil in place upon the chair as though sitting, and a tentacle that looks like an eyeless snake, to provide a functional mouth for speaking. With a slight adjustment akin to settling into a seat, the portal shifts to align itself with the back of the chair, minimizing any potentially-distracting effects the Peer-Ambassador might have upon any onlookers. The eye, now more obviously stretching out from the portal on an eyestalk-tentacle, surveys the room as the other attendees find their way to their seats.

A man, wearing a white dress in a sheer material that shows off his legs, walks onto the stage. He stands in the center of it, beginning to speak.

"Why does any place have a financial system? Why do the financial systems that places have, look like what they do? I think that the easiest place to start answering this question, is the very start of the idea of economics. A lonely man, trapped far from civilization on a deserted island, must make economic decisions, as do all of us. Knowing the exchange rate of coconuts to fish, and knowing how many of one is worth the other, is a question even he has to ask. But he must make no financial decisions, not in any sense we can think of. Neither would a goldsmith selling his wares to customers. Nor if he sold the store itself. And yet, when merchants trade notes to the gold within his vaults, that is considered the ancestral example of a financial system. I think that is the very kernel of a financial system: the trading of goods with near-zero utility outside of trading. The gold will not be leaving the goldsmith's vault; a bullion trader is a far better option, if the traders wished to purchase gold in metal form.

In many financial systems, there is a ban on charging interest. Why would anyone choose their system to have that feature? Well, they must have chosen one option or the other. It'd be instructive to understand their decision. The rationale is, in essence, that interest is demanding payment for the trading away of something inevitably worth less. Before the trade, you had beautiful, if inedible, coins or other signifiers of wealth. You trade away your coins today, and the only thing you ask in return for your 100 coins, is for you to have 105 coins in exchange!

It appears that we're discussing a truly bizarre institution. Why does any place have a norm of trading goods whose principal purpose is trading for other, similar goods? And why do some, and only some, financial systems ban selling a smaller sum of coins for a larger sum of coins? How could any of this trading be of any utility to anyone whatsoever?"

Into the silence following these questions, the Peer-Ambassador presses the button which signals their willingness to speak... and when no one else seems ready to take the opportunity, they toggle their microphone and begin.

"For illustrative purposes, we shall answer your questions with other questions.

As a mature Cultivator, our genetic memory contains many useful skills, notably including that skill which is of great utility to any civilization whose members must still consume biomass... namely, those most basic of cultivation techniques called agriculture. Applying agricultural techniques with a Cultivator's reach and finesse, it would only take a modest fraction of our time and attention to ensure that all arable land within a reasonable extension of our chosen demesne is cultivated with a suitable variety of useful and edible plants.

Should we elect to spend our time and effort in this way, we would then find ourselves in possession of a rather large quantity of edible seed grains, if not still more delicate and less portable produce. As our own metabolic needs are more conveniently met through internal cultivation methods than through agriculture, the entire crop is scarcely more valuable to us than the time it took to produce it... but unless we are surrounded by only other Cultivators, there are no doubt some other entities who might find this produce significantly more valuable. However, the quantity of produce that we can easily cultivate far exceeds the nutritional requirements of almost any other entity. We might distribute our produce to many individuals in exchange for various favours, but those quantities which would be a minor hobby to produce might quickly demand all of our attention, should we attempt to individually distribute it. We might instead seek out those entities which have specialized in the handling of large quantities of produce; perhaps an entity specializing in mechanical separation and reprocessing of grains, or one prepared to harvest the metabolic by-products of large quantities of minuscule organisms, or one which tends to a large number of non-sapient pets while collecting their bodily secretions.

Unfortunately, such large exchanges would leave us with a very similar problems to our first. As little as we need large quantities of raw seed grains, we have scarcely more need for similarly large quantities of altered grain powders, nor solutions of the chemical ethylene hydrate, nor the preserved bodily secretions of various pet species. Those things which we actually value are instead along the lines of novel samples of genetic materials, multi-sensory recordings of emotionally intense experiences, or extended personal interactions with intelligent partners. Though it is not impossible that we might occasionally acquire these directly via simple trades, our desire for intellectual stimulation exceeds what might conveniently be acquired through such methods.

Our questions then, become: how might we arrange to satiate such complex desires while only having common plant life to exchange? Similarly, given the expected growth and harvest cycles of a suitable assortment of plant species under a given set of local conditions, how might we most conveniently arrange to do so continually, when the bulk of our income occurs at specific times set by local climate conditions rather than by our own choice? Such 'bizarre' institutions as you describe serve as attempts to answer these questions, among others."