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I think that mediums of trade will always present and necessary.
I think we are going in the wrong direction with digital...one burp from the sun and it's all gone with no record.
Block chain thinks they can and will shut down their satellites if a CME is detected but I wouldn't count on it.
I read a biography of Alan Turing. He convinced his aunt that the war was going to drive up sterling and drive hard money out of circulation. Already, current coins were 50% silver only. So, she converted some money into old coins and he buried them. Then, he could not find them. Risks are real... Cryptocurrencies are not going away; and after a massive solar flare, they will come back.
The only way, I think, that the cowery shells were of value would be scarcity or desirable for one reason or another.
It is curious. Maybe like you say, they represented debt or a promise to pay or receive something.
If "Curious Currency" builds on this, I will be glad to add that to my collection...but from the review, I am not certain that it does.
Jan
I am happy to know that you benefited from the works of DSB, I will tell so when next we have lunch.
Wow. All these incredible ideas...from the work of one woman. Please pass to DSB the appreciation and thanks from a total stranger. Her work and insights have adorned the halls of my mind.
Jan
I've heard the story of how people moved from barter to exchanging a widely valued item to exchanging coins or notes representing ownership of the valued item, and eventually to a modern banking system where new money is created as people create new value.
But this says that although we've seen failed economies resort to barter, we don't have solid historical records of a society going from barter to money.
Writing was invented to keep track of goods. Written inventories are older than written poems by at least 2000 years.
I wonder if there's a continuum of money.
1. Barter - Mutual Coincidence of wants
2. Intermediary Barter - I have tools and want groceries. I provide tools to the furniture maker in exchange for furniture that I give to the grocery store in exchange for food
3a) Media of exchange with real value - People use something like a pound of coffee to represent about a solid hour's worth of unskilled work. Even people who don't have use for coffee accept it in trade knowing they can give it to a coffee drinker.
3b) Media of exchange with real value but also value by virtue of being rare and medium of exchange - Precious metals
4) Notes representing 3a or 3b so you don't have to carry them around
5) fiat money - Government or large entity issues money or script whose value comes from fiat
6) Fractional reserve money - Money is created when financial institutions lend out deposits to people with profitable ideas to create value
I have not studied this, but I suspect it happened in degrees.
I don't know if the etymology is related, but every time I wrote real value I thought about how in Spanish "real" means royal or a small unit of currency.
Real in the sense of actual or factual comes from "res" which means "thing" as in Res Publica. ("Thing" btw is old Norse for a gathering as in Iceland, their congress has been the Althing (all-thing) for over 1000 years.)
As for money, barter, and gifts, you would have to read the ethnographies for yourself and take into consideration first that Europeans wrote them. The white guys show up. It's a party. Everyone brings something. They cook it in big pits and open fires and everyone shares. Like Thanksgiving. But is that how they always did it? If one guy kills one deer how does that work out? The Europeans might have drawn a sketch showing a large field with planted corn, but was it tribal or was any of it for the one family? I do not know.
Anyway, barter had to be invented and could only have made sense if ritual gift exchange were an accepted social practice. The idea of barter for personal gain is probably much, much later than most of us guess. Some other posters here know the works of JULIAN JAYNES on the "bicameral mind." He said that if you examine The Iliad versus The Odyssey, in the first book the heroes seldom speak of their inner states. In the second book, the hero is well aware of the fact that his motives are hidden from others. He is not at all in any way raging and yelling for revenge. To me, it indicates that private motives followed the invention of wriiting.
I've been to Thingvellir and the modern Althingi. That area where people used to camp out at Thingvellir waiting to have their disputes or lobbying heard is amazing. I could imagine people in this isolated place, at a time when no one in the world knows that blood circulates in the body, meeting.
I knew modern Icelandic speakers can read the Sagas in Old Norse, but I didn't know that thingi was related to English thing. I figured it was a false cognate.
"that private motives followed the invention of writing"
I will have to read that. It simply doesn't make sense to me. We see religions, presumably since antiquity, urging people to put their gods' and fellow humans' interests above their own. I figured that was because there were people following their own interests, while kings and religious leaders wanted people serving them. But maybe it is just natural for people to feel duty toward their family and any larger group that's an extension of their family. Maybe it's not until recently that very concept of private motives existed.
In this case it's really true because it's at the intersection of the tectonic plates, making for amazing geological features.
Thingvellir is not far from Gullfoss waterfall. I wasn't prepared for how huge it was. The first thing I thought of was how much electricity could be generated. The placards explain they attempted to use it to generate electricity. I would have been eager to do that 100 years ago, but I'm so glad the plans fell through so I could see it in its natural state.
I am about to review The 100 Greatest Ancient Coins, 2nd Editiion, Whitman, 2019, by Harlan Berk. I intereviewed him back in 2008 for the first edition. But, again, he just repeats the old stories about barter. Other than that, the book is charming, a thin coffee table presentation with double page spreads for the Top Ten.
"he becomes moralistic about evils of international debt banking... a lot like the rightwing populists and some libertarians"
Rightwing and leftwing populists seem alike to me. They seem to think value is in fixed supply, can physically be put in safes, and is obtained by gangs joining forces to make sure their own group gets its fair share.
This seems like such a childlike view that I wonder if I actually misunderstand what they're saying.