yes & you clearly think you're making anthropological points but you're not, you're just making circular arguments. No anthropologist thinks Sungir beads were "money" just because they're durable & were (presumably) considered valuable
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theres 100x rich social theories to choose from, form marx's social relations to Mauss's social contracts to latour's association of collectives, what's impoverishing and damaging is asocial or asi theory; atomism, self-preservation and paranoia.
In fact, trust minimizing institutions and technologies are crucial to expanding human relationships beyond the clan level. Much of this moral primitivism you cite, when applied to much larger societies, would or have lead to barbarity, e.g. of communist states.
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just a thought: why not actually find out how intertribal trade worked in reality instead of lecturing others about what "must" have happened?
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That's not a very credible thought, since I have studied that and much else related to early stores of value and media of wealth transfer. You might want to try actually reading what I have written instead of attacking strawmen.
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Aargh, just reading this ”conversation” quickly reminded me, why we are pointing the ultimate weapons of mass destruction on each other. Immidiately stop. Do you have any idea how badly we need you guys to have a real conversation? ”Really smart people never understand anything.”
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well I'm happy to go back to the original point if you like I came in in the middle. What was it?
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For decades my interest has been, besides a scientific curiosity about what really happened, technological, i.e. how to design better forms of money. That branched into figuring out what objects were used for money or similar & why they were designed the way they were.
End of conversation
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like exogamic marriage, always already interclan, it was about giving gifts to the inlaws, gifts that at some point after capitalism included commodities, like beads from liverpool. on moral primitivism' and intellectual bankruptcy see the bruce lee meme:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWfOACOe3Fg …
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"Giving gifts." Akin to anthropology books titled "The Children of X." As if they were just innocent kids dancing around Christmas trees and we should be more like them. "Gift" is lazy translation of thousands of unique indigenous words describing usually obligatory transfers.
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FYI
@davidgraeber is also critical of the gift theory. My general takeaway from his book is that money, like debt, originated as a material and quantifiable formalization of trust relationships. So not really sure how it’s different from your view at a high level. -
Good to hear. Our disagreements are likely 1) how seriously we take small definitional distinctions, (2) role of evolution, 3) moral & political lessons we draw, 4) he doesn't know what my theories actually are & is attacking strawmen (I'm no big expert on his theories either).
End of conversation
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