Also Debt: The First 5000 Years - Greaber, supper interesting, but I rarely see it discussed in Bitcoin circles.
The core thesis, to my understanding, is that credit was the original form of money, but different civilisations also used different things as money depending on the asset being exchanged.
The most striking insight for me from the book is that religion and morality, what is good and what is bad, is tightly linked to the debtor/debtee interactions.
Selgin more than adequately debunked Graeber as far as I’m concerned, and then Elaine put in a few more nails just for lolz:
https://www.alt-m.org/2016/03/15/myth-myth-barter/
https://elaineou.com/2020/04/10/the-myth-of-the-myth-of-the-myth-of-barter/
Still an enjoyable read imo
Have not read this until now, thanks! It is nice to read counter arguments, but I would not call it debunking. Graeber explores the history of money from many different, perspectives and is mostly concern with pre-modern societies. One can debunk it with only with more detailed anthropological eveidence, which Selgin does not even try to provide in his short article.
okay sure, maybe “debunking” is harsh, but I don’t think what you are looking for is possible given Selgin’s whole point is that you just can’t know this stuff. Graeber conflates an absence of evidence with an evidence of absence and Selgin says, “okay, not only is that silly, but if you think about what you are analysing, of course there is an absence of evidence. how could there fail to be?”
I agree with that argument, but that is not quite true either. He provides anthropological evidence that barter->coinage->credit it is not the only direction in which money evolved, not just in simple societies but also in complex and large early civilisations.
That of course does not mean that the barter could not have been a proto economy in some parts of the world, but it also shows that the reality is much more interesting and complex, and that people are highly creative. So I highly recommend Graeber for his anarchistic creativity, even though I accept that his fews are limited by his ideology, which is the case for anymof us. I mean Selgin also does not see Bitcoin as money, so he is far from perfect: )
Anyway, the book is much richer in content and explores a range of perspectives, and Selgin's critic seems quite superficial.
Selgin more than adequately debunked Graeber as far as I’m concerned, and then Elaine put in a few more nails just for lolz:
https://www.alt-m.org/2016/03/15/myth-myth-barter/
https://elaineou.com/2020/04/10/the-myth-of-the-myth-of-the-myth-of-barter/
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