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My impression after reading Graeber's book was that he was probably right in questioning the simple story of a barter economy transitioning into a money economy
by winstonewert 8y ago
My impression after reading Graeber's book was that he was probably right in questioning the simple story of a barter economy transitioning into a money economy. But he's way too simplistic in his own narrative. It is hard for me to see how people could start denominating debt in terms of money without at least some limited sense of using money to replace barter.
He also seems to think that this is the foundation of all economic thought and thus he suggests that all of economics is wrong because they have assumed an incorrect origin of money. (I exaggerate, but not by much).
- Isamu 8y agoThere is something in that. You have to establish relative worth in order to assign a money value. That is, 1 pig is worth 10 chickens, or whatever. And 1 house is worth N pigs, and so on, assigning relative value to services also. It makes sense that relative value is established first by barter, but it is not such a stretch to think that people could work the same out relatively quickly, once the money value of one common thing is established.
- digi_owl 8y agoMy personal take on where coins came from is weights used with balance scales (and certain metals would be favored there as they would not change their weight much while stored). Also, i think i once read that at some point Japan used a system based on a standardized rice bowl. So in earlier days it may well have been easier to set the price of a service (or anything that involved laborers) based on the number of meals needed.
- dnautics 8y agoI loved debt: and I got a similar impression. Also I thought it was amusing that he criticized the barter theory of money on the grounds that it's self-serving for economists, when of course his model more correct though it may be, is self-serving for anthropologists.
- jahaja 8y agoSelf-serving for the influential community of anthropologists that's intertwined with contemporary power? I wish.
- petermcneeley 8y agoGraeber's point was that barter is not used in small societies. In debt-ed social relations were the means of negotiated trade. Paying for things with currency was how one dealt with strangers in a spot trade. In our world most interactions are alienated transactions with strangers, thus money is used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs&feature=youtu.be&t=1500 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs&feature=youtu.be...
- winstonewert 8y agoIt has been a number of years since I read the book, but my recollection was that he argued that money was invented to quantify debt and that any kind of currency was a later invention.
- qubex 8y agoLikewise.
- neilwilson 8y agoIt's fairly straightforward. I give you a pig and say you owe me a pig. You are in debt. Eventually somebody notes down I owe you a pig in some manner and gives it to the person the debt is owed to. That can then be used to settle a debt they owe to somebody else. We use debts we own to settle debts we owe based entirely on our natural ability to know who owes us a favour and who we owe a favour. Write them down and exchange them and suddenly you have a money system. Get one trusted guy to issue his iou in exchange for the one you have and you have a banker doing discounting and a standard unit of exchange in an area.
- winstonewert 8y agoWhere does the standard unit of exchange come from? People may start exchanging IOUs, but they would be for different things, not a standard.