While simplifications of complex ideas are often necessary to begin an essay, this level of simplification does violence to the historical reality. Having read

While simplifications of complex ideas are often necessary to begin an essay, this level of simplification does violence to the historical reality. Having read a lot of economic history, to read this essay's simplifications, I feel a bit like John Derbyshire, when he asked, at the end of "Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra," was it possible to get useful work done with Category Theory? Is there any level of abstraction that goes too far? Likewise, here I would ask, if you have to simplify reality this much to start your essay, then maybe you should rethink your whole thesis? "For centuries, work has been incredibly inefficient. In the “barter era”, one person would do work in exchange for someone else’s work. E.g. I’ll make you a silver fork in exchange for salt and spices. There were many things challenging about this type of economy. 1) There was no common currency to transact and understand value, and 2) on a macro level, it was hard to know whether your good or service was really needed and whether it was going up or down in value. E.g. Is there a surplus of spices? Should I be spending time in spices or something else this year?" I have a dozen criticisms of this essay, but maybe the most obvious is that I still ask myself these questions several times a year, and I'm definitely not living in a barter economy. Indeed, these questions seem more likely to be asked in a monetary economy that's already seen considerable specialization of labor -- one person is making a silver fork, and another person is harvesting spices. This is the world of, say for instance, Britain in 1800 AD, not 1800 BC.