Economists owned by history, facts and reality yet again

[Cain]

Not surprising, but interesting, and yet another piece to add to the "economics is not a science, it is a cult" file

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%e2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html

Last week, Robert F. Murphy published a piece on the webpage of the Von Mises Institute responding to some points I made in a recent interview on Naked Capitalism, where I mentioned that the standard economic accounts of the emergence of money from barter appears to be wildly wrong. Since this contradicted a position taken by one of the gods of the Austrian pantheon, the 19th century economist Carl Menger, Murphy apparently felt honor-bound to respond.

In a way, Murphy's essay barely merits response. In the interview I'm simply referring to arguments made in my book, 'Debt: The First 5000 Years'. In his response, Murphy didn't even consult the book; in fact he later admitted he was responding at least in part not even to the interview but to an inaccurate summary of my position someone had made in another blog!

We are not, in other words, dealing with a work of scholarship. However, in the blogsphere, the quality or even intention of an argument often doesn't matter. I have to assume Murphy was aware that all he had to do was to write something—anything really—and claim it rebutted me, and the piece would be instantly snatched up by a right-wing echo chamber, mirrored on half a dozen websites and that followers of those websites would then dutifully begin appearing across the web declaring to everyone willing to listen that my work had been rebutted. The fact that I instantly appeared on the Von Mises web page to offer a detailed response, and that Murphy has since effectively conceded, writing an elaborate climb-down saying that he had no intention to cast doubt on my argument as a whole at all, only to note that I had not definitively disproved Menger's, has done nothing to change this. Indeed, on both US and UK Amazon, I have seen fans of Austrian economics appear to inform potential buyers that I am an economic ignoramus whose work has been entirely discredited.

I'm not sure what is more interesting, the fact that a "pure" barter economy has never existed, or that economists are so resistant to the idea.

[Telarus]

Wow, that was a REALLY good article.

[Freeky]

I'm not sure what is more interesting, the fact that a "pure" barter economy has never existed, or that economists are so resistant to the idea.

I think the latter is more interesting, at least to me, since it shows a sort of wishing to go back to their roots (secret wish not whatever), only to find that there is nothing to go back to in the first place.

[Doktor Howl]

Last week, Robert F. Murphy published a piece on the webpage of the Von Mises Institute

DP's gonna shit.   

[Disco Pickle]

Last week, Robert F. Murphy published a piece on the webpage of the Von Mises Institute

DP's gonna shit.   

You confuse me with someone who thinks everything a group of people believes/writes/says is gospel because I think a good deal of what they say has merit.

There are often posts that go up on that site I don't agree with or that I don't think pass the smell test as completely genuine.

But then, that happens all over the internets.  Mostly because it's full of people, I think.

That WAS an exception example of completely sloppy blogging though.  Hero worship can be lead to lots of such hilarity.

[Doktor Howl]

You confuse me with someone who thinks everything a group of people believes/writes/says is gospel because I think a good deal of what they say has merit.

There are often posts that go up on that site I don't agree with or that I don't think pass the smell test as completely genuine.

But then, that happens all over the internets.  Mostly because it's full of people, I think.

That WAS an exception example of completely sloppy blogging though.  Hero worship can be lead to lots of such hilarity.

Frankly, that whole site is infested with bad signal.  It's essentially a religious venue.

[Elder Iptuous]

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.
it also seems to me that any society that didn't go down this path would have avoided it only by adopting one of the systems he discusses in his article, like the gifting set ups.  it would then follow that all societies would fall into one of these two camps, but that doesn't invalidate the intuitively enticing sequence of events that Adams described, just the time-line.

fun to watch them sniping at each other, though...  

[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.

[Disco Pickle]

You confuse me with someone who thinks everything a group of people believes/writes/says is gospel because I think a good deal of what they say has merit.

There are often posts that go up on that site I don't agree with or that I don't think pass the smell test as completely genuine.

But then, that happens all over the internets.  Mostly because it's full of people, I think.

That WAS an exception example of completely sloppy blogging though.  Hero worship can be lead to lots of such hilarity.

Frankly, that whole site is infested with bad signal.  It's essentially a religious venue.

It's Economics. 

[Elder Iptuous]

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.

I doubt it existed as an overall economic system even before that.  we just don't have much to go on before it, right?

[Doktor Howl]

You confuse me with someone who thinks everything a group of people believes/writes/says is gospel because I think a good deal of what they say has merit.

There are often posts that go up on that site I don't agree with or that I don't think pass the smell test as completely genuine.

But then, that happens all over the internets.  Mostly because it's full of people, I think.

That WAS an exception example of completely sloppy blogging though.  Hero worship can be lead to lots of such hilarity.

Frankly, that whole site is infested with bad signal.  It's essentially a religious venue.

It's Economics. 

That's what I said.

[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.

I doubt it existed as an overall economic system even before that.  we just don't have much to go on before it, right?

Actually, the Sumerians basically documented their move from barter to recorded, arbitrarily set transactions.

[Elder Iptuous]

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.

I doubt it existed as an overall economic system even before that.  we just don't have much to go on before it, right?

Actually, the Sumerians basically documented their move from barter to recorded, arbitrarily set transactions.

You're saying they had a widespread pure barter economy? that would surprise the hell out of me...

[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.

I doubt it existed as an overall economic system even before that.  we just don't have much to go on before it, right?

Actually, the Sumerians basically documented their move from barter to recorded, arbitrarily set transactions.

You're saying they had a widespread pure barter economy? that would surprise the hell out of me...

It didn't survive the move from a purely agrarian community to an urban environment.

There's about 8 million links for this, but this grade school one is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the clearest:

To keep track of financial transactions, the ancient Sumerians used little clay figurines, representing a certain amount of a commodity, such as sheep or corn. They would group say, five sheep tokens with three corn tokens in a ball of clay to represent a transaction. On the outside of the ball of clay they would impress the tokens in the clay to make an imprint, making the contents of the ball (transaction) known. Some tokens for different commodities did not make good impressions into a ball of clay. Instead a symbol representing the token for the commodity was placed on the outside of the clay ball. Here was the birth of Sumerian writing. Over time, the clay was flattened instead of balled up, to make a more convenient writing surface. Vocabulary was expanded and gradually pictograms of cows and sheep were replaced by the wedge shaped language of Cuneiform.

http://www.petoskeyschools.org/vandeventer.si.t/Links/sumerian_culture_and_contributio.htm

Eventually, some spag realized that you didn't need the little figurines inside the clay to represent the barter, and they just started using tablets.  That led directly to Goldmann/Sachs.

WAY TO GO, MONKEYS!

[BabylonHoruv]

Looks like what the linked article is saying is that rather than barter leading to money, money leads to barter (when it is taken away)