{"id":1538,"date":"2011-08-31T15:50:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T15:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.multiplier-effect.org\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2011-08-31T16:04:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T16:04:31","slug":"a-just-so-story-about-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/a-just-so-story-about-money\/","title":{"rendered":"A Just-So Story About Money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From an intriguing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2011\/08\/what-is-debt-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.html\">interview<\/a> with David Graeber, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Debt-First-000-Years-ebook\/dp\/B00513DGIO\/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;m=AG56TWVU5XWC2\"><em>Debt:\u00a0 The First 5,000 Years<\/em><\/a>, regarding the history of money and debt:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Yes there\u2019s a standard story we\u2019re all taught&#8230;\u00a0 It really deserves no other introduction: according to this theory all transactions were by barter. \u201cTell you what, I\u2019ll give you twenty chickens for that cow.\u201d Or three arrow-heads for that beaver pelt or what-have-you. This created inconveniences, because maybe your neighbor doesn\u2019t need chickens right now, so you have to invent money.<\/em><br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<em>Think about what they\u2019re saying here \u2013 basically: that a bunch of Neolithic farmers in a village somewhere, or Native Americans or whatever, will be engaging in transactions only through the spot trade. So, if your neighbor doesn\u2019t have what you want right now, no big deal. Obviously what would really happen, and this is what anthropologists observe when neighbors do engage in something like exchange with each other, if you want your neighbor\u2019s cow, you\u2019d say, \u201cwow, nice cow\u201d and he\u2019d say \u201cyou like it? Take it!\u201d \u2013 and now you owe him one.<\/em><br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<em>So really, rather than the standard story \u2013 first there\u2019s barter, then money, then finally credit comes out of that \u2013 if anything its precisely the other way around. Credit and debt comes first, then coinage emerges thousands of years later and then, when you do find \u201cI\u2019ll give you twenty chickens for that cow\u201d type of barter systems, it\u2019s usually when there used to be cash markets, but for some reason \u2013 as in Russia, for example, in 1998 \u2013 the currency collapses or disappears.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From an intriguing interview with David Graeber, author of Debt:\u00a0 The First 5,000 Years, regarding the history of money and debt: Yes there\u2019s a standard story we\u2019re all taught&#8230;\u00a0 It really deserves no other introduction: according to this theory all transactions were by barter. \u201cTell you what, I\u2019ll give you twenty chickens for that cow.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}