NP unless "by indirection we find direction out" Anarchism

[David Morris]

It seems this Barter Myth's biggest point is immediate versus future
exchange balancing of value.  Value for value, immediate or not, is still
essentially barter.  Adding future balancing of exchanged value is today
called "interest rate." So maybe his myth is based on truth.

On Thursday, August 9, 2012, Mark Kohut wrote:

> In the aforementioned DEBT by Graeber, he hits hard at what he calls a
> basic economics
> "myth' (meaning untruth)....
>
> The Barter Myth. Te reduce to oversimplicity, he argues that economists
> from Smith on,
> argued without historical, anthropological evidence that First there
> was--musta been--barter
> then came money....
>
> Instead he argues with scholarly buttressing of his own and from others,
> that all the evidence
> suggests that in extended kinship--family--and small village ways of
> survival, people 'exchanged' fer sure--
> lots of good examples--but almost always more like an informal 'tab' was
> kept even just mentally
> ...you had extra early tomatoes,you gave some and later got, say,
>  a pumpkin.....'borrowing', getting in advance many non-food things--then
> debts
> settled at harvest time...
>
> One reason this distinction is so important is that economists soon
> equated bartering with immediate exchange
> what economists call "spot trades'---because that is how money works or
> came to work....
>
>
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