On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > New York TIMES / February 16, 2012 / opinion > > Economics Made Easy: Think Friction >> And so it is in the world of finance. As the historian Niall Ferguson >> reminds us in his book “The Ascent of Money,” hard as it is to imagine, >> people didn’t always have money. The invention of money went a long way >> toward reducing the friction, the inefficiency, in financial transactions. >> No longer did the farmer have to bring sacks of potatoes to the marketplace >> to trade for eggs and milk. Money was a medium of exchange that greatly >> reduced what some have called the financial coefficient of drag. <
And as the David Graeber anthropological history that Shag and others have posted shows, that is at least historically inaccurate. It may make sense as a model . It may make sense to say that capitalism behaves in certain respects as though that was its history. But if offered as *history* there seems to be really strong evidence that this is false. I have got to read "Debt" and few other things by Graeber. From on-line short works by him, and quotes on this list and Doug's interviews he seems to be very worth studying. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
