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More just-so stories about the history of money 'Shelling Out: The Origins of Money' by Nick Szabo
http://qttr.at/1r50-
"...making necklaces must have had an important selection benefit... during an era when humans lived constantly on the brink of starvation"
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Szabo needs to forget the ahistorical Pinkerism and read some anthropology, particularly 'The Original Affluent Society' by Marshall Sahlins
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@strypey He needs to read Alfred Mitchell Innes (1913), as cited by #Graeber: http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/what-is-money/
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@mjd he also needs to read anthropologists like Mauss, and Levi-Strauss who stress that "gift economies" are the opposite of money economies
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@mjd gift exchange is based on creating and maintaining relationships of trust, the purpose of money is avoiding the need for them
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@strypey I think it was #Graeber (& surely others) who noted that, historically, money as a unit of account is a trust relation (you don't take an IOU from someone you don't trust), but coins are for dealing with strangers.
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@mjd if you swap "credit" for "money" in that sentence, that's what Graeber said in 'Debt' (and what Eisenstein says in 'Sacred Economics')
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@strypey "… credit and credit alone is money." #q A. Mitchell Innes http://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/what-is-money/
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@strypey Credit issued by the private sector has to be paid back. Public sector credit does not, and is how the public sector mobilises resources to meet policy objectives. "Government debt" is just a record of $-denominated credit ("money") issued to the private sector. #MMT
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@mjd I'm a bit lost, is that part of the current conversation or a reference to an earlier one?
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@strypey Sorry my instance is a bit laggy in posting because I'm a crap sysadmin. You made a distinction between "credit" and "money" where I believe there is none.
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@mjd I can't find the post to yours I was replying to. Yes, all money = credit, but not all credit = money (not all fish are trout)
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@strypey You may have something there: transferability. The positive number in our account at the bank is just a +ve number. It becomes money because it can be swapped for central bank credits which banks can exchange between themselves or use for tax payments.
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@strypey That may be why the Bank of England considers local currencies "vouchers" rather than money; you can't use it in tax payments to the sovereign. As #MMT says, "taxes drive money". http://ur1.ca/qp3l3
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@mjd exactly. I may have a + number in a timebank or mutual credit exchange, but it's not transferable (outside that exchange), so not money
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@strypey But on the other hand, if it's sovereign-currency-denominated, you just need a route back to money accepted as taxes. The Bristol Pound for example will be exchanged on demand for £GB, the same way your bank account credits can be exchanged for cash. http://ur1.ca/qp3n4
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@mjd in which case it functions as a "proxy currency", like BitCoin and other cryptocurrencies, BarterCard, and others.
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@mjd in the short term this probably makes them more likely to be accepted, because they are effectively backed by taxable fiat currency
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@strypey Actually, I'm against a guarantee to exchange £ for £. The "vertical fiscal imbalance" problem could be solved if local government runs its own central bank, with a whole load of ancillary benefits (supporting regional development rather than outsourcing, etc.).
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@mjd maybe, but the a similar argument could be made for making local government sovereign (ie returning to pre-renaissance city-states)
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@mjd but both economic and political power were centralized by states for a reason, and have mostly been globalized for similar reasons
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@mjd the question is how do convince enough people to buy-in to political-economic decentralization? Because I suspect it would have to both
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@mjd a mayoral candidate here proposed a Dunedin Dollar accepted by the Council in payment of "rates" (local taxes) and was laughed at
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@strypey That sucks. A subset of the universal cross-party "yes, we _could_ create money by spending it, but where would the money come from?" balanced-budget idiocy. As Stephanie Kelton says, the problem is that they think money grows on rich people.
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@strypey I have to get over my worry about appearing like a Hare Krishna by saying "Here, read this slim volume which will explain everything." http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf #MMT
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"Anyone can create money; the problem lies in getting it accepted." #q Hyman Minsky http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2011/06/modern-money-theory-primer-on.html http://ur1.ca/qp3jl
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@mjd but certainly not gift (by the anthropological definition) or barter (by any meaningful definition) because it's numerical accounting
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@mjd Graeber, like other anthropologists, defines money as exchange that is measured numerically
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@mjd gift is exchange for the purpose of relationship building, barter is a one-off exchange of stuff for stuff
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@strypey With people you trust, you settle accounts at the harvest festival. Then you drink and play raucous music. I tell you, modern accountancy has lost all its medieval allure.
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@mjd seems to me it's that medieval allure that mutual credit systems ("green dollars", timebanks) are trying to revive, with mixed success
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@mjd are you familiar with the work of Professor Steve Keen? Any thoughts on his monetary theories?
http://qttr.at/1r52
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