What is the US dollar backed by?
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Theoretically the US dollar should be backed by police, courts, and the only way to pay federal taxes (sure it isn’t perfect with fraud, scams, and such, but for the most part the system does an okay job to fight criminal activity involving money)
Think of the dollar like a mini contracts backed by the US government (and it’s actually owned by the government too, the US dollars itself is technically never truly your money).
If you have a checkbook, an empty check has no value until signed with a dollar domination and the promise that can be exchanged for cash for whatever you’re exchanging it for. Think of dollars like this, but each has a “static” legal promise signed, stamped, and given dollar denomination so it can be of trading something for something, or akin to a gift card that has a permanent balance so you hand over the entire gift card for exchange instead of depleting a balance from it. Each time the card exchanges hands for trade a bit of it’s value is chipped off in the form of taxes (think of the taxes as a fee) and in return you get police and courts in return to help enforce your trade of your dollars.
Another part of a dollar’s value is to make trading of goods and services more convenient, people love convenience and there’s value in that in itself, that’s why money is also often referred to as a tool (and as I already said taxes are the fee you pay to use this tool, this fee helps keep the US government system, police, law, and courts alive). The dollar is like a non-living trusted middle-man escrow exchanging between of goods and service. (e.g. I’ll trade you 30 chickens for 1 cow, but instead of giving you all chickens at ones I’ll give you 30 coupons each signed and stamped by me guarantee you one chicken per coupon and are backed by the courts and enforced by the sheriff to deter me from stealing the cow from you… if you trade and give these chicken coupons to others I will also redeem each coupon for a chicken) then overtime these chicken-coupons become like a form of money.
Yeah, money objectively itself has no value in itself. But it’s rather the legal mini-contract like nature given by the US government behind a functioning US system of police and courts to help enforce trading goods and services using the US dollars that helps give it value.
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