How The Barter Myth Harms Us
How The Barter Myth Harms Us
No example of a barter economy… has ever been described… all available ethnography suggests that there has never been such a thing.
Ummm... this is really a video I would call "basic" in so many ways. Doesn't get into marriage. Marriage is the classic component of any bartering system, any political economy. It really is super basic. What you need to do is talk about political economy, and the forms of such. What we may loosely term "bartering economies" are ones that trade not only goods, but also family members, in the form of marriage. Who let this thing through here that understands socialism and the history of political economies? Bartering is the first glimpse we get into economies that, while still in touch with the means of production, begin trying to "barter better" and take advantage of hierarchies. I want to play nice, but I can't subscribe to a community called "socialism" that does not understand these basic things about how political economies have developed over time. This video does not even consider capitalism as a late development. It just tries to explain bartering economies in capitalist terms.
If you think monetary economies developed from barter economies, attacking the OP for sharing the scientific consensus makes you look culty. You've got a lot of indignation and no evidence.
I'm not saying that monetary economies developed from barter economies. I'm saying so much more than that. I guess my language was a bit strong because I found this video to be too simplistic for my preferences. Bartering and money are not mutually exclusive. Bartering and capitalism are not mutually exclusive. Bartering and feudalism are not mutually exclusive. You can most certainly barter within any type of economy. That's what actually happens every day, in fact. But, you see, that's what I find lacking in this video. It's too brief for my taste and, to satisfy me as a viewer, would need to talk about political economies, their different forms and structures, etc. I have nothing against the OP. I limited my comment to the video. If the OP found the video enlightening, I think that's great. It's probably useful, just too lacking for me.