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> debunking the myth of barter coming before credit Not debunked at all. How do people even agree what things are worth in order to offer credit before there e

> debunking the myth of barter coming before credit Not debunked at all. How do people even agree what things are worth in order to offer credit before there exists any prices? The issue with Graeber and others is they are looking for a historical account of barter pre-dating a historical record of debt, but they will never find it, because the record-keeping begin for the purpose of recording debt. Any barter would pre-date any record keeping, and would likely be very shortly-lived before people converge onto a common money. They have completely misinterpreted Menger's 'On the Origins of Money' to begin with, and are debunking a straw-man. > "We have actual case studies of communities developing money prices from scratch: namely, prisoners who end up using cigarettes as the common medium of exchange. [...] The prisoners certainly weren't giving each other things from their Red Cross kits as gifts or as loans. No, they first were trading (in a state of direct exchange) and cigarettes quickly became the money in their community [...] The prices (quoted in cigarettes) of various items were posted on a board. If Graeber and his colleagues stumbled upon the ruins of this P.O.W. camp, they would presumably conclude that there was never a preexisting state of barter, because they only found boards listing prices quoted in terms of cigarettes." - https://mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-menger https://mises.org/library/have-anthropologists-overturned-me...

RobertoG 5y ago
>>"The issue with Graeber and others is they are looking for a historical account of barter pre-dating a historical record of debt, but they will never find it, because the record-keeping begin for the purpose of recording debt." Is this is the case, it seems to me that the issue is not with Graeber and others but, with the guys that claim something about which there is not historical account. >>"We have actual case studies of communities developing money prices from scratch: " The point is not if barter is used sometimes or if some people, in some circumstances, would start using cigarettes as money, but if that's the main history of money, specifically in the context of early states, as has been claimed for many years without any kind of evidence. The burden of proof is not in the guys that examine the historic and archeology evidence, but in the ones that want to sell a narrative without evidence.
- sparkie 5y ago
  > The point is not if barter is used sometimes or if some people, in some circumstances, would start using cigarettes as money, but if that's the main history of money, specifically in the context of early states, as has been claimed for many years without any kind of evidence. Both sides of the argument are making claims without evidence, because evidence prior to record-keeping of debt doesn't exist, and never will. There are only theories about how money came into being, and some are more plausible than others. Graeber himself contradicts his own "debunking" of Menger's theory: > "All evidence that exists points to money emerging as a series of fixed equivalents between silver – the stuff used to measure fixed equivalents in long distance trade, and conveniently stockpiled in the temples themselves where it was used to make images of gods, etc – and grain, the stuff used to pay the most important rations from temple stockpiles to its workers. Hence a silver shekel was fixed as the amount of silver equivalent to the numbers of bushels of barley that could provide 2 meals a day for a temple worker over the course of a month. It was the Temples that actually had a need to extend a silver system from a unit used to compare the value of a limited number of rare items traded long distance, used almost exclusively by members of the political or administrative elite of the societies in question – to something that could be used to compare the values of everyday items, like planks of wood, jugs of beer, and so forth." Why silver? Why were they already stockpiling silver? How was it decided that silver would be used to measure fixed equivalents in long distance trade? How was it decided the ratio of silver to bushels of barley? What were these political and administrative elite doing when they proposed to offer a certain amount of silver for some long-distance traded rare items? (We have a word for this: 'barter') Why would the foreigners they are trading with even want all this silver? It takes some circular reasoning to get to where Graeber thinks he is, because he misinterpreted Menger to begin with. The above does not discredit Menger at all.
  - RobertoG 5y ago
    It seems to me, that nobody is denying the existence of barter. For instance, barter exist in our current modern societies. The question is if there are any evidence that the history of money is fundamentally the history of barter. So, you have record-keeping that contradict the barter history and you have anthropology evidence that human semi-nomad tribes, even if they could barter sometimes, don't organize their society around barter, but, somehow, the more plausible evidence is barter. Don't know what to say to that.
andrepd 5y ago
>How do people even agree what things are worth in order to offer credit before there exists any prices? This is prominently discussed by Graeber in the book, so this comment leads me to believe you have even read it.
- I-M-S 5y ago
  Indeed. In fact, OP's quote is considered and dismissed by Graeber in Debt using precisely the same example: "Occasionally, we can even find some kind of currency beginning to develop: for instance, in POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a kind of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists. But were too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it - exactly the situation "imagined" by the economics textbooks."
- sparkie 5y ago
  I read it some time ago (~2011) and don't remember the details. At the time, I knew nothing of money and took most of the book at face value. However, when I later began studying Austrian economics, it became quite clear that Graeber's assumptions were based on circular reasoning, and that Graeber's writings on economics are through a left-leaning lens. That isn't to cast doubt on his work on Anthropology, which is fascinating to read, but I have doubts that he truly understood Menger's argument to begin with (or perhaps willingly chose to filter it to fit into his world-view.)
SpodGaju 5y ago
> How do people even agree what things are worth Being inside a deeply rooted paradigm, it is hard to imagine that the idea of "the worth" of a thing might not have been a paradigm that pre-historic people comprehended. The thing that anthropologists like Graeber excel at is how they can take themselves out of their own conditioned thinking. Think off this, when you see a n expensive car drive by you will most likely reflexively say "That car is probably worth $300,000". You assign an objective worth to the car, when classical economics will tell you that the actual worth of a car is subjective. Personal ownership was not seen in the same way in the past as we see it today so objective worth might not have been in their mental framework.

RobertoG 5y ago

>>"The issue with Graeber and others is they are looking for a historical account of barter pre-dating a historical record of debt, but they will never find it, because the record-keeping begin for the purpose of recording debt." Is this is the case, it seems to me that the issue is not with Graeber and others but, with the guys that claim something about which there is not historical account. >>"We have actual case studies of communities developing money prices from scratch: " The point is not if barter is used sometimes or if some people, in some circumstances, would start using cigarettes as money, but if that's the main history of money, specifically in the context of early states, as has been claimed for many years without any kind of evidence. The burden of proof is not in the guys that examine the historic and archeology evidence, but in the ones that want to sell a narrative without evidence.

sparkie 5y ago
> The point is not if barter is used sometimes or if some people, in some circumstances, would start using cigarettes as money, but if that's the main history of money, specifically in the context of early states, as has been claimed for many years without any kind of evidence. Both sides of the argument are making claims without evidence, because evidence prior to record-keeping of debt doesn't exist, and never will. There are only theories about how money came into being, and some are more plausible than others. Graeber himself contradicts his own "debunking" of Menger's theory: > "All evidence that exists points to money emerging as a series of fixed equivalents between silver – the stuff used to measure fixed equivalents in long distance trade, and conveniently stockpiled in the temples themselves where it was used to make images of gods, etc – and grain, the stuff used to pay the most important rations from temple stockpiles to its workers. Hence a silver shekel was fixed as the amount of silver equivalent to the numbers of bushels of barley that could provide 2 meals a day for a temple worker over the course of a month. It was the Temples that actually had a need to extend a silver system from a unit used to compare the value of a limited number of rare items traded long distance, used almost exclusively by members of the political or administrative elite of the societies in question – to something that could be used to compare the values of everyday items, like planks of wood, jugs of beer, and so forth." Why silver? Why were they already stockpiling silver? How was it decided that silver would be used to measure fixed equivalents in long distance trade? How was it decided the ratio of silver to bushels of barley? What were these political and administrative elite doing when they proposed to offer a certain amount of silver for some long-distance traded rare items? (We have a word for this: 'barter') Why would the foreigners they are trading with even want all this silver? It takes some circular reasoning to get to where Graeber thinks he is, because he misinterpreted Menger to begin with. The above does not discredit Menger at all.
- RobertoG 5y ago
  It seems to me, that nobody is denying the existence of barter. For instance, barter exist in our current modern societies. The question is if there are any evidence that the history of money is fundamentally the history of barter. So, you have record-keeping that contradict the barter history and you have anthropology evidence that human semi-nomad tribes, even if they could barter sometimes, don't organize their society around barter, but, somehow, the more plausible evidence is barter. Don't know what to say to that.

andrepd 5y ago

>How do people even agree what things are worth in order to offer credit before there exists any prices? This is prominently discussed by Graeber in the book, so this comment leads me to believe you have even read it.

I-M-S 5y ago
Indeed. In fact, OP's quote is considered and dismissed by Graeber in Debt using precisely the same example: "Occasionally, we can even find some kind of currency beginning to develop: for instance, in POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a kind of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists. But were too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it - exactly the situation "imagined" by the economics textbooks."
sparkie 5y ago
I read it some time ago (~2011) and don't remember the details. At the time, I knew nothing of money and took most of the book at face value. However, when I later began studying Austrian economics, it became quite clear that Graeber's assumptions were based on circular reasoning, and that Graeber's writings on economics are through a left-leaning lens. That isn't to cast doubt on his work on Anthropology, which is fascinating to read, but I have doubts that he truly understood Menger's argument to begin with (or perhaps willingly chose to filter it to fit into his world-view.)

SpodGaju 5y ago

> How do people even agree what things are worth Being inside a deeply rooted paradigm, it is hard to imagine that the idea of "the worth" of a thing might not have been a paradigm that pre-historic people comprehended. The thing that anthropologists like Graeber excel at is how they can take themselves out of their own conditioned thinking. Think off this, when you see a n expensive car drive by you will most likely reflexively say "That car is probably worth $300,000". You assign an objective worth to the car, when classical economics will tell you that the actual worth of a car is subjective. Personal ownership was not seen in the same way in the past as we see it today so objective worth might not have been in their mental framework.