Re: Rejected posting on the origins of money

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

for some reason the pen-l server rejected this as already being sent.
I don't see this, so I'll try again. Sorry about any duplication.

On Aug 12, 2006, I wrote:
> > > Doug, I think you're falling for the textbook barter vs. money
> > > dichotomy fallacy. It really should a be barter-exchange vs.
> > > money-based exchange vs. non-exchange systems choice.
> > >
> > > In an organization not using money internally

On Doug Henwood wrote:
> > Such an organization would either be quite small, with rudimentary
> > production, or it would be quite advanced, a society that exists now
> > only in our heads.

me:
> you're right today, but people started in such organizations (clans,
> etc.) Further, the Inca Empire was quite large but (if I remember
> correctly) didn't use money. These seem relevant to economic history.
>
> Even today, do many corporations use markets and money for internal
> operations (as opposed to buying materials and services and paying
> employees)? Aren't they more likely to use bureaucratic command
> relations?
>
> It's not like I'm advocating abolishing money. But econ. textbooks
> tend to give us this unconsidered slop about "barter" being the main
> way of organizing exchange before money was. That's simplistic at
> best. It was non-exchange or non-market exchange (e.g., reciprocity)
> that preceded the use of money.

--
Jim Devine / "It is however always important to remember that the
ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often
is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That
is why an economist may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute
nonsense...." -- Joseph Schumpeter [edited]