The villager parable is too egalitarian. That's not really how it worked.
For most of history, peasants were sustenance farmers, meaning they grew their own food and if the harvest was bad, they could starve. For them, there was no such thing as insurance and they really needed ways to reduce risk. For example, they'd feast their neighbors so that when times were hard, the neighbors would hopefully help them out in turn. Investing in close-knit relationships isn't like barter - it's more like informal credit. Kinship networks still work something like this today.
And this meant they didn't really need money. Social obligations were everything.
But how do people who aren't peasants themselves get food? By extracting rents and taxes, in return for protection and certain services, perhaps plowing fields. Local "big men" might take payment in kind, but for a more organized government, they'd collect taxes using money, which gave the peasants incentives to grow and sell food for money.
So villages would monetize or demonetize depending on the state of nearby governments. A monetized society allows people who aren't farmers to buy food. It allows cities to exist. Therefore, civilization was built on military force, taxes, and rent extracted from peasants, who were the basis of a mostly agricultural economy.
Be glad our civilization isn't built on sustenance farming anymore.
This is a fair point, and rhymes with other commentators’ feedback. I could have started with `Obligation -> Debt -> Money`, for example, and that strikes me as a better beginning. People need money to pay their debts, and this theme would re-appear at various levels of the hierarchy: the villager needs stones to pay taxes, the village needs black money to pay tribute, and so forth. I think this would add meaningful nuance to the "just so" motivations; money isn't solely motivated by trade but also by social obligations and political power.
That said, I would not find a full Graeber-ization helpful. It wouldn't change the structure of the post, and I don't think Graeber's framework is useful for understanding much of the content, such as the Fed funds rate, the intra-bank clearinghouse, or correspondent banking.
skybrian · · focus · HN ↗
For most of history, peasants were sustenance farmers, meaning they grew their own food and if the harvest was bad, they could starve. For them, there was no such thing as insurance and they really needed ways to reduce risk. For example, they'd feast their neighbors so that when times were hard, the neighbors would hopefully help them out in turn. Investing in close-knit relationships isn't like barter - it's more like informal credit. Kinship networks still work something like this today.
And this meant they didn't really need money. Social obligations were everything.
But how do people who aren't peasants themselves get food? By extracting rents and taxes, in return for protection and certain services, perhaps plowing fields. Local "big men" might take payment in kind, but for a more organized government, they'd collect taxes using money, which gave the peasants incentives to grow and sell food for money.
So villages would monetize or demonetize depending on the state of nearby governments. A monetized society allows people who aren't farmers to buy food. It allows cities to exist. Therefore, civilization was built on military force, taxes, and rent extracted from peasants, who were the basis of a mostly agricultural economy.
Be glad our civilization isn't built on sustenance farming anymore.
gwgundersen · · focus · HN ↗
That said, I would not find a full Graeber-ization helpful. It wouldn't change the structure of the post, and I don't think Graeber's framework is useful for understanding much of the content, such as the Fed funds rate, the intra-bank clearinghouse, or correspondent banking.