Economists owned by history, facts and reality yet again

[Kai]

it seems apparent, to me, that the account given in Wealth of Nations on the invention of money would transpire almost instantaneously when the context of exchange implies double coincidence of wants, such that a 'pure barter economy' could not be said to have ever existed.

Actually, barter stopped happening the moment the Sumerians started recording transactions.

In the middle east, sure. In North and South America, barter continued until European colonization.

There's nothing inherently /wrong/ with a barter system. Currency just simplifies exchanges, and so it is almost universally adopted after initial introduction.

[BabylonHoruv]

it seems apparent, to me, that the account given in Wealth of Nations on the invention of money would transpire almost instantaneously when the context of exchange implies double coincidence of wants, such that a 'pure barter economy' could not be said to have ever existed.

Actually, barter stopped happening the moment the Sumerians started recording transactions.

In the middle east, sure. In North and South America, barter continued until European colonization.

There's nothing inherently /wrong/ with a barter system. Currency just simplifies exchanges, and so it is almost universally adopted after initial introduction.

Except according to the linked article it didn't happen at all, at least not in the way we usually think of it.

[Doktor Howl]

it seems apparent, to me, that the account given in Wealth of Nations on the invention of money would transpire almost instantaneously when the context of exchange implies double coincidence of wants, such that a 'pure barter economy' could not be said to have ever existed.

Actually, barter stopped happening the moment the Sumerians started recording transactions.

In the middle east, sure. In North and South America, barter continued until European colonization.

There's nothing inherently /wrong/ with a barter system. Currency just simplifies exchanges, and so it is almost universally adopted after initial introduction.

Except according to the linked article it didn't happen at all, at least not in the way we usually think of it.

It does?  Please to quote the relevant portion.

[Elder Iptuous]

i believe the thing the author is disputing is that there was ever a 'pure' barter economy where all transactions were spot trades.  he says that since we've not observed any in existing societies that have no money, then there is no reason to believe that they ever occurred.

also, Dok, on the Sumerians, i had read that they used precious metals and shell ring coins from the beginning but i see that the shell coins look like they only date back to around 3000 bc whereas Sumer was peopled well before that.  i would still be surprised if they didn't have a commonly accepted medium(s) of exchange before that, though.  (not refuting that they kept track of asynchronous exchanges by means of records as you posted, of course)

[BabylonHoruv]

it seems apparent, to me, that the account given in Wealth of Nations on the invention of money would transpire almost instantaneously when the context of exchange implies double coincidence of wants, such that a 'pure barter economy' could not be said to have ever existed.

Actually, barter stopped happening the moment the Sumerians started recording transactions.

In the middle east, sure. In North and South America, barter continued until European colonization.

There's nothing inherently /wrong/ with a barter system. Currency just simplifies exchanges, and so it is almost universally adopted after initial introduction.

Except according to the linked article it didn't happen at all, at least not in the way we usually think of it.

It does?  Please to quote the relevant portion.

3) Anthropologists gradually fanned out into the world and began directly observing how economies where money was not used (or anyway, not used for everyday transactions) actually worked. What they discovered was an at first bewildering variety of arrangements, ranging from competitive gift-giving to communal stockpiling to places where economic relations centered on neighbors trying to guess each other's dreams. What they never found was any place, anywhere, where economic relations between members of community took the form economists predicted: "I'll give you twenty chickens for that cow." Hence in the definitive anthropological work on the subject, Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey concludes, "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" [2]

[Reginald Ret]

it seems apparent, to me, that the account given in Wealth of Nations on the invention of money would transpire almost instantaneously when the context of exchange implies double coincidence of wants, such that a 'pure barter economy' could not be said to have ever existed.

Actually, barter stopped happening the moment the Sumerians started recording transactions.

In the middle east, sure. In North and South America, barter continued until European colonization.

There's nothing inherently /wrong/ with a barter system. Currency just simplifies exchanges, and so it is almost universally adopted after initial introduction.

Except according to the linked article it didn't happen at all, at least not in the way we usually think of it.

It does?  Please to quote the relevant portion.

3) Anthropologists gradually fanned out into the world and began directly observing how economies where money was not used (or anyway, not used for everyday transactions) actually worked. What they discovered was an at first bewildering variety of arrangements, ranging from competitive gift-giving to communal stockpiling to places where economic relations centered on neighbors trying to guess each other's dreams. What they never found was any place, anywhere, where economic relations between members of community took the form economists predicted: "I'll give you twenty chickens for that cow." Hence in the definitive anthropological work on the subject, Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey concludes, "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" [2]

Haw haw!
They want monkeys to do things simple.
Narrowing your definitions untill nothing fits them does not a refutation make.