So you disagree with Graeber's history of debt?
If they (and you) read up on what travelers, missionaries, & ethnographers actually witnessed & recorded of recently contacted cultures, you will find that SoV & medium of wealth transfer long preceded record-keeping. See https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/954225789129469952 … & refs in the linked articles.https://twitter.com/mikejcasey/status/981141578285805569 …
-
-
-
Graeber used a very narrow definition of "money" that did not include a huge variety of well-documented stores of value and media of wealth transfer.
-
really? What are some money-like objects that I ignore that either 1. Arise from barter or 2. Act differently than the forms of money I discuss & describe?
-
Why are you raising the topic of "barter"? I'm talking about stores of value and media of wealth transfer, neither of which need to have anything to do with barter (especially not in the narrow sense in which you use that word).
-
Tweet unavailable
-
Numerical measurement and counting like 1-2-3-4-... (as opposed to visually mapping sets of objects) were not necessary for SoV or media of wealth transfer to evolve.
-
Tweet unavailable
-
If you define it that broadly and vaguely, then unit of account may have been practically universal. A better specified definition is needed.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
People that claim record-keeping preceded store of value can't answer the question why record-keeping Mesopotamians used silver (and barley) as unit of account. Hint, because it was already a store of value.
-
Tweet unavailable
-
except for the Incas who had no money or tokens. Instead they used rope with knots (quipa) for record keeping and accounting.pic.twitter.com/3yBRN18W3O
-
The Inca used a number of collectibles as stores of value and media of wealth transfer, including "ceremonial" textiles and monetary metals. The conquistadors weren't looting strings with knots.
-
sure, but no coins. They had huge amounts of gold and silver, all in the form of jewelry and larger artifacts. For everyday transactions they seem to have used these ledgers made of strings instead of a currency.
-
For SoV purposes it doesn't matter that their monetary metals were in some other form besides coins (as indeed most monetary metals were for most of their history).
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
conceptual issue: money as hoard springing up from the organic community does not hold historically. Gold or silver were rejected as currencies in precolonial Africa even though they exported the former since 11th century and converted the silver pesos of creole traders straight/
-
back into fluctuating commodity monies (cowries, manillas) used to settle existing debts (arising from trade, murder and marriage) & exchange upstream (ivory, slaves flowed back not as goods transported by merchant caravans but through matrimonial alliances and circuits).
-
Speculative. Rejection of gold & silver could easily have had many other causes, e.g. (1) most clans didn't provide enough value from trade or relationships for higher-value silver much less gold to work better as payment, (2) networks effects (lock-in) of these other forms.
-
empirics: monthly wage for a Kru Liberian seafarer in 1840 was 1£/gold doubloon (240 pence or 100 reales) Kru bridewealth was x20 that, paid mostly in brass money minted and purchased from local forgers. so satoshis are digital cowries? gold was only Ashanti royal currency.pic.twitter.com/5PggXhuciN
-
Interesting thanks! Non-coin gold wasn't then widely circulated outside upper & merchant classes much of anywhere, AFAIK, and even in coin form smallest denomination too big for most. Wage stated per month but how often actually paid? Likely much more frequent than monthly.
-
paid in bounties and lumpsum at contract end, in silver after merchants set up shop along coast & Kru could buy goods & diff. currencies directly. Silver peso was the only global currency but cowries have been the only universal currency (glass/porcelain beads r ersatz cowries)
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.