Replying to Avatar Mike Dilger ☑️

Interesting video on money, quite a different take than I hear from bitcoiners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-D5FERQzU4

My summary of the video: There were never any barter economies. Money predates writing (the oldest writing cuniform on clay tablets were accounting records). Money is always tightly tied up with state power, primarily because states can enforce payment for debts owned which originated from people accidently harming other people.. the governmental power steps in and says "A owes B X amount of state-approved money to make this right." Thus, the value of a currency without intrinsic value is imparted to it by the power of the state that controls that money. Taxes just tie it even tighter to the governmental power. Every central power (state) has it's own money, with few exceptions (e.g. the Euro experiment, which is failing).

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Kayne 6mo ago

For most of human history bartering did not happen between individuals, it happened between communities or families.

Within a community they had a gift economy, from each according to their ability and to each according to their need.

Even between seperate communities there was gift economies, the excess was simply shared.

With agriculture came more long term food storage, which made bartering between communities more popular, but before that if you had excess and no way to store it why wouldn't you just give it away? The gift economy strengthens social bonds, and mutual benefit between communities.

Proto language evolved to keep better track of seasons, essentially written language evolved from calendars and keeping track of time, way before anything you could call money.

Whether a culture created one before the other depended on that cultures needs and resources.

If everything was abundant all year round and you lived in paradise you didn't need to invent anything but did have a lot of spare time for creative and social pursuits.

If you lived somehow harsh you had insensitives to invent things that helped with survival.

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