{"id":4485,"date":"2015-01-13T14:58:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T19:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4485"},"modified":"2015-01-13T14:58:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T19:58:25","slug":"show-me-the-real-money-three-monetary-myths-that-need-busting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4485","title":{"rendered":"Show me the real money: Three monetary myths that need busting"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/suitpossum.blogspot.co.uk\/2015\/01\/three-money-myths.html\" target=\"_blank\">Show me the real money: Three monetary myths that need busting<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Money pervades our everyday economic interactions. But, despite its importance, it is also pervasively misunderstood. Here are three common monetary myths \u2013 frequently perpetuated by economists \u2013 that need challenging.<\/p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Myth 1: Money emerges from barter<\/strong><\/div>\n<div class=\"separator\">Economists often tell a tale about how old communities first used barter to exchange goods and services. Bartering throws up tricky situations. Take as an example a farmer trying to exchange a cow for bread from a baker, a clumsy and difficult negotiation. Thus, according the old economists like Adam Smith, money was supposedly &#8216;invented&#8217; as a way to get around that inefficiency and confusion.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This narrative is ahistorical and inaccurate. Anthropologists have long had a much more convincing account: in small communities without money, exchange does not take place through on-the-spot barter. Rather it takes place through\u00a0<i>reciprocity<\/i>, the process whereby I give you something now, and then you return the favour over time. In essence, communities develop elaborate systems of score-keeping \u2013 informal \u2018mutual credit\u2019 systems are created, and if I don\u2019t eventually honour my obligations under that system, I will be shunned from the community.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It is these \u2018I owe you one\u2019 systems that are behind the origins of money. Money is an abstracted form of such credit, taken out of the interpersonal context of a small community, and formalised and legalised within a political system.<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Show me the real money: Three monetary myths that need busting Money pervades our everyday economic interactions. But, despite its importance, it is also pervasively misunderstood. Here are three common monetary myths \u2013 frequently perpetuated by economists \u2013 that need challenging. Myth 1: Money emerges from barter Economists often tell a tale about how old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1582,246,2651,536,2652],"class_list":["post-4485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-barter","tag-economy","tag-monetary-myths","tag-money","tag-money-myths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4486,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions\/4486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}