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https://theconversation.com/business-basics-where-did-money-come-from-229481>
"For the most part, economists continue to believe a story of money told to
generations of students by a series of textbooks over the past 150 years.
This story asks us to imagine a pre-monetary barter economy, where people
bought goods and services by trading them for other goods and services.
Eventually a suitable commodity – perhaps gold or silver – emerged as both an
acceptable means of exchange for conducting trade and a convenient unit of
account for expressing value.
Later, coins were issued – eventually to be monopolised by governments – and
later still paper money, credit, and banking systems.
The problem with this story is that there is no historical evidence to support
it. As was noted by prominent anthropologist Caroline Humphreys:
No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described,
let alone the emergence from it of money … all available ethnography
suggests that there has never been such a thing.
So where did money come from exactly? One difficulty we face is that writing
about money – what gives it value, and how monetary systems work – is not
something young economists are generally encouraged to do.
As a consequence, among the best articles ever written about money are two now
more than 100 years old by British economist Alfred Mitchell-Innes, entitled
“What is Money?” and “The Credit Theory of Money”.
These papers, until recently almost completely ignored by the economics
profession, tell a different story, rejecting the idea that money evolved
naturally from barter.
We can now be confident this version is closer to the truth. And it has big
implications for how we think about the role of governments within monetary
systems, and what gives money value. Acknowledging the true story of money
would force a paradigm shift among economists – no wonder a lot of them don’t
want to think about it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
