Teeth, language and racial origins, page-1261

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03/08/20

20:59

Post #: 46275820
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Originally posted by tigmeister: ↑

Yes, definition is the problem.
The economists use a theory of spot trade barters between strangers and then they rationalise from this that one commodity becomes more barterable for spot trades, and this gradually evolved into money. The problem is that what you are defining as barter and what we actually find in these ancient societies is not the type of spot trade barter between strangers who have no social obligations to each other. The definitions you are giving for what constitutes barter are very different to the type of barter that the economists use to arrive at their theory of free market money, being created by higglers and hagglers in market stalls free of government influence.

In reality in these villages there are no spot trades between strangers, as David Graeber pointed out, and if a man wants something he simply says I like that, and the neighbour says, it is yours you can have it with no strings attached, but everyone knows he is in debted for some future favour in return.

This is not the type of spot trade "barter" between strangers that should have created the need for the invention of money.

Besides, whenever I have posted on HC that government could easily employ the unemployed if it chose simply by deficit spending with newly minted currency, I get hit with the hyperinflation argument, and here you are telling me that people used cowrie shells as money unenforced by government, it's ludicrous.

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I get hit with the hyperinflation argument, and here you are telling me that people used cowrie shells as money unenforced by government, it's ludicrous.

You may think that such trading was ludicrous but in spite of the fact that I didn't raise the issue of trading using cowrie shells it happened.

By the way, the giant oil company Shell started life as a shell trader; hence the name.
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