this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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Today I Learned

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From wikipedia:

Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence that societies relied only on barter before using money for trade.[73] Instead, non-monetary societies operated primarily along the principles of gift economics, and in more complex economies, on debt.[74][75][76] When barter occurred, it was usually between strangers or would-be enemies.[77]

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[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago (10 children)

Yup. Capitalism is built on a foundation of lies.

The other thing I think may just be straight up a pro-capitalist-propaganda myth is "homesteading." Honestly, do we have any evidence that that has ever happened in human history? It seems like every extample a Libertarian (with a capital "L") might come up with is actually an example of theft of land. From either indigenous peoples or from pre-capitalist land owners.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 29 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Money is just a representational tool for value. A service rendered might make you in-debted to the person and you will have to render a service in return to get out of it. No money is involved, but if a person rendered you a big service and you return the favor with a small service, it might make the other person less inclined to help you again in a big way.

The introduction of something that represents a value is a logical step when keeping track of debt. Be it salt, cows, labor or even money.

Gift economies are of course probably hotly debated topics. I'd love to see a multi-year experiment that allocates a large area to a group and lets them try out such an economy. I don't know how they will interface with the real world to get good (medicine, electricity, ...) or if it will just throw them back into the dark ages and they'll have to progress from there.

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Have you never had a friend group? Like that's a dead-ass simple 'study' of a gift economy. Sometimes someone pays for lunch, sometimes someone pays for beer, sometimes someone brings weed or bakes cookies or sings a song. Everyone helps everyone else out. Each according to their need, based on their ability. Or is that not something you're familiar with, because if not, you need better friends.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Yes, and then there’s the one who always receives gifts but never contributes. The free rider problem is present even at this tiny scale. Reputation takes care of it, generally, when the friend group decides to stop hanging out with the non-reciprocal individual.

I haven’t heard of any proposal that could scale up a reciprocal economy like this up to a city of thousands (let alone millions). The issue is Dunbar’s number: our brains simply cannot track relationships with thousands of people.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

First part was good and got the point across. The personal attack at the end was unnecessary.

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