Debunking the barter myth .[embedded content] Even in the most advanced industrial economies, if we strip exchange down to its barest essentials and peel off the obscuring layer of money, we find that trade between individuals and nations largely boils down to barter. Paul Samuelson You will find similar nonsense stories told in almost all mainstream textbooks today. And the truth, as so often when it comes to economics fairytales, is quite another: 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 never has been such a thing. Caroline Humphrey
Topics:
Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Economics
This could be interesting, too:
Lars Pålsson Syll writes How inequality causes financial crises
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Andreas Cervenka och den svenska bostadsbubblan
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Debunking the balanced budget superstition
Lars Pålsson Syll writes How inequality causes financial crises
Debunking the barter myth
.
Even in the most advanced industrial economies, if we strip exchange down to its barest essentials and peel off the obscuring layer of money, we find that trade between individuals and nations largely boils down to barter.
You will find similar nonsense stories told in almost all mainstream textbooks today. And the truth, as so often when it comes to economics fairytales, is quite another:
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 never has been such a thing.