The "barter myth" isn't really considered valid economic history anymore--and I'm not sure to what extent it ever was--but it's useful to explain the purpose of

The "barter myth" isn't really considered valid economic history anymore--and I'm not sure to what extent it ever was--but it's useful to explain the purpose of money in a society that cannot reasonably keep track of informal debt. When modern people in modern economies no longer have access to money (from economic collapse, or being imprisoned, among other things) they often resort to barter. So the barter myth may not explain the economic behavior of primitive tribes, but it might explain us. As for Graeber's book, I'll excerpt from a comment I made a while ago: he is frequently wrong about easily verifiable facts in such a way that it supports his world view. There's no reason to trust a liar when he tries to tell you something you don't know about. One particularly remarkable Graeberism is where he describes the founding of Apple: > Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages but there are plenty others, an exhaustive list of which would be too long for this comment. He's also a somewhat unhinged and deeply horrible person. All this is discussed here by leftist economist Brad DeLong: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-fo.. http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-fo....