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Comment on Are currency/monetary base economic systems coming to their logical end?

JayleneSlide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

Wampum was used by Eastern Costal tribes as a storytelling aid.

In the Salish Tribes, dentalium shell necklaces were used as a status symbol/indication of social rank. Some tribes used the necklaces as a type of currency, but I’ve only heard the “some tribes did this” part; never anything about which specific tribes used dentalium as currency.

Obviously, anything that holds perceived value can be traded.

Source: went to junior high in a school that taught two full years of Haudenosaunee (also called Iroquois) history.

Salish source: I’ve been a volunteer naturalist in the Puget Sound for eight years with an annual training requirement, with entire days allocated to history of the original Salish tribe for the area where we’re working.

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crashfrog@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
If trade occurs, then by definition they have currency; there are no barter economies.

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- JayleneSlide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  You are confidently incorrect on this. Currency == money. Money is, for we hoi polloi, a barely consentual conversion and exchange system for our labor, hypothetically allowing us to convert our labor into readily fungible exchange units. Money, at the Capital Class level, is debt, and therefore control, i.e. power. Money is just how they keep score.
  
  There are plenty of barter and Communist (“from those of ability to those of need”) economies, just on scales that fly below the radar of most economists. Your sweeping assertion leads me to believe that you may simply be ignorant of those non-monetary exchanges. Would you be willing to add more context to your assertion?
  
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  - crashfrog@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    
    No ethnographic studies have shown that any present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, and anthropologists have found no evidence that money emerged from barter.
    
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter
    
    What would be an example of the barter economy you’re certain exists? How do they overcome the need for double coincidence?
    
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    JayleneSlide@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I misspoke, and you raise a good point. I meant gift economies, and that error is on me. And those are pretty well-documented. I’ll stick to my firsthand experiences:
    
    Waianae, Oahu in Hawaii. The weekly take-what-you-need-bring-what-you-can food exchanges there are a huge stopgap for food insecurity and also spur community bonding
    
    Burning Man - TTITD, regionals, and much of the hippie festival circuit have a robust gifting culture
    
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