From Barter to Blockchains - WTF is… Money?

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, Aug 06, 2017 at 06:08:00AM -0300, Juan wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 15:15:39 +0700
> Jason McVetta <jason.mcvetta at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > People interested in economics may enjoy reading historian David
> > Graeber's excellent book, *Debt: The First 2000 Years*.
> 
> 	OK. Let me translate. People who know fuck about economics and

:D

Please, do traslate :)


> 	are brain-dead statists will enjoy their echo chamber in the
> 	form of some shitty propaganda written by some
> 	charlatan-apologist of the banking mafia. 
> 
> 
> > Graeber argues that a) no actually-existing historical society

To echo Juan, the most Graeber could possibly say is "... in recorded
history" - the point being, he is reducing his set to those
"historical societies" that documented their history, or that someone
documented.

But even that sounds like hogwash.

Just because neighbours in the Russian Far East give each other what
the other needs, and demonstrate (compared to city dwellers) very
high levels of "natural goodwill to one another", but didn't record
these "transactions" (from firewood to potatoes, onions and tomatoes
to sharing a shot wild hog), doesn't remove the fundamental reality
that frontier families naturally look out for one another.

In fact, even modern farmers just a 45 minute drive out from
Melbourne, Australia in "modern day 2017" look out for one another -
when one farmer's tractor is out and his cow is stuck in a ditch, his
neighbour farmer unhesitatingly jumps to help out with his own
tractor.

This is something that farmers, and frontier families, ALWAYS do for
one another.

And obviously the same/ similar happens with excess "not sold to
market" produce (apples, oranges etc) - rural neighbours who have
goodwill in their hearts, help one another out.


They DO NOT keep a ledger recording, e.g.:
 - one cow out of ditch, effective debt to neighbour $80
 - shared a wild hog on the embers of the bonfire last night, $50
 - gave box of apples, reduce debt to neighbour by $15


This might sound exceptionally unusual to those who have not
experienced this absud and strange type of human behaviour, but this
"ledger keeping" or "documentation of barter" simply does NOT happen
- not even in "modern 2017 Australia".


Who cares if some city-dwelling accountant type is not aware of such
basic rural human realities?




> > used
> > barter as a primary component of their economic system;
> 
> 	huh. Any group of people with a minimum of economic organization
> 	will move from ONE STEP barter, to TWO STEPS BARTER, also known
> 	as COMMODITY MONEY. 

AKA, it's an axiom - and Graeber is, strangely, disputing this,
presumably because "we don't have accounting records demonstrating
this".


> 	This is the sort of fuckingly basic stuff that you know if you
> 	know economics, as opposed to being some 'academic' scumbag
> 	writing propaganda for the banking mafia. 
> 
> 
> > and b)
> > debt-money significantly predates both hard currency and markets.
> 
> 	sure. Don't forget that the human race was created by jakobo
> 	goldam sacks, and rothschild, and moses. 
> 
> 
> 	buy YES! what you say is so amazingly....absurd and stupid.
> 
> 	government paper and deby predates market money exactly like
> 	mcdonalds predates the roman empire.

Translation appreciated :)