By leading with the improvement-order-barter story, the article announces a bias that borders on propaganda. It's maybe worth objecting to even if the goal isn

By leading with the improvement-order-barter story, the article announces a bias that borders on propaganda. It's maybe worth objecting to even if the goal isn't to be historically accurate. The problem that was actually being solved when money was invented was how to get recently conquered villagers to support the soldiers that recently conquered them. (Demand taxes in the coinage that you pay your solders with, then they can live off the local economy and you don't have to feed them directly, which might be hard if they're very far away--tax collectors can take years to show up, but the demand for the new currency is instant, so your soldiers get fed right away). The system of interpersonal debt that predated money likely outperformed money in a variety of ways from the perspective of the users. It was only for the conquerors that the invention of money solved any problem at all. It's hard to keep reading the article when it starts with the story that is used to distract from this.