Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Invention of Money

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 119 posts

Re: The Invention of Money

#101

Post by sdenton4 »

JackFr wrote: post #93
pradn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. The majority of the book is a straightforward history of money that doesn't accept received wisdom. Near the end, the author's more anarchist leanings color the narrative. The last two chapters are not as informative, but that doesn't mean one should discount the majority of the book. A few takeaways I have from that book: 1) In rural/traditional societies, debt (measured and stored in peop…

> The classic economy-textbook idea that we invented currency so we don't have to barter with the goods we produce has never been observed in history. http://icm.clsbe.lisboa.ucp.pt/docentes/url/jcn/ie2/0POWCamp... Cigarettes were the numeraire for all transactions for the sake of efficiency.

That's addressed in the book: the cigarette economy is aping an existing cash+capitalistic economy, and thus doesn't provide a template for the evolution of a monetary economy from scratch.

Re: The Invention of Money

#102

Post by Proven »

Money (gold) wasn't invented but discovered.

It's frightening to see that many "learned" their economics and finance from "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and similar books!

Re: The Invention of Money

#103

Post by throwaway_gold »

rags2riches wrote: post #96
tim333 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Gold has no inherent value... Jewellery. 2200 tons last year. Was popular 3000 years ago ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask_of_Tutankhamun ) and will probably be in 3000 more. Try getting the wife a plastic wedding ring if you think it has no value. I daresay that's different from saying it's any good as money.

How popular would gold jewelry be if gold was inexpensive?

Very, if you like high quality items.

Unlike plastics and most other metals, Gold is easy to work with (i.e. non-brittle, low melting point, easy to mold/cast, it is conductive so its easy to plate other metals) and it is non-corrosive. Therefore, gold jewelry is historically a finer end product that can be made with less skill and the result lasts longer.

To a lesser degree of importance for jewelry, but still a prized property for wearable items, gold is antibacterial and anti-fungal.

Sure people may collectively decide the market price of gold, but people never collectively decided the properties of gold were valuable, those properties are inherently valued by people and Gold happens to have them.

Silver has these same qualities, hence why both Silver and Gold are historically used for jewelry in the first place. People didn't start making jewelry out of Gold and Silver because Gold and Silver was "valuable", rather Gold and Silver were used to make jewelry because of their ideal properties for jewelry, and its the properties of these metals that make gold/silver valuable.

Re: The Invention of Money

#104

Post by xrd »

mymythisisthis wrote: post #100
contingencies wrote: post #18

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is my preferred introduction. Critically this New Yorker account is missing the word 'usury' which was largely agreed to be evil by early religions and societies that experienced its effects...

Samuel Pepy's journal is a fascinating account of how money functioned in the 1660s. There was very little actual money, everything was done in IOUs. He worked in the Navy, purchasing food and rope. The King gave him an IOU, he then wrote IOUs to people he bought things from. People seemed to know exactly how much you had. One time a friend of his hurt a servant, the next day everyone went to cash in their IOU with t…

When I read this, I thought: this sounds like the same plot from Dumb and Dumber!

Re: The Invention of Money

#105

Post by gshubert17 »

Symmetry wrote: post #48
contingencies wrote: post #18

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is my preferred introduction. Critically this New Yorker account is missing the word 'usury' which was largely agreed to be evil by early religions and societies that experienced its effects...

I read that book and mostly enjoyed it than I got to the last chapter and found it was riddled with errors I could easily spot like the in following sentence: Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages. Reading arou…

The quote seems to be from Chapter 5, "A brief treatise on the moral grounds of economic relations", page 96. It comes at the end of a paragraph giving examples of how almost everyone follows the principle of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" if they are collaborating on some common project.

Just before the Apple Computers example, Graeber writes "The greater the need to improvise, the more democratic the cooperation tends to become. Inventors have always understood this, start-up capitalists frequently figure it out, and computer engineers have recently rediscovered the principle: not only with things like freeware, which everyone talks about, but even in the organization of their businesses."

Re: The Invention of Money

#106

Post by nybble41 »

nosianu wrote: post #24
digitalengineer wrote: post #4

So if gold is the only real money (and everything else is just debt)... What does gold’s year-long rally this year tell us?

How is gold more real than debt? To me debt is far superior. Debt means you have a commitment from a human (directly or indirectly, if the debt is owed by an organization). Gold has no inherent value at all apart from some minor uses of relatively small amounts in the economy. Except by agreement, which debt also has. An example for debt-based I once read somewhere was a kid writing an IOU for garden work. As long as…

> To me debt is far superior. Debt means you have a commitment from a human (directly or indirectly, if the debt is owed by an organization).

You're assuming that the debt is backed by labor and involves a commitment to perform some specific service. Such promises are generally considered unenforceable as the capacity for future labor is inalienable, at least in societies which don't permit slavery or indentured servitude. At best you may be able to claim some property in compensation if the service is not performed. How is an indirect claim on someone else's gold or other property "far superior" to actually possessing it yourself? Sure you save a bit on the cost of storage, but in exchange you add the potential for non-payment.

> An example for debt-based I once read somewhere was a kid writing an IOU for garden work. As long as the debt is not paid - i.e. the kid does the work and the IOU is destroyed - that piece of paper circulates through the neighborhood. It has real value (actual work).

And if the kid proves unable or unwilling to do the work, what becomes of the value of the IOU? Repayment is not the only event that can take an IOU out of circulation. Better to have a claim on, or better yet possession of, a valued and marketable commodity than a mere promise of future services from a specific human being who could die, become disabled, or simply choose to dispute or repudiate the terms of the IOU.

Re: The Invention of Money

#107

Post by [deleted] »

pradn wrote: post #89
JackFr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Debt: The First 5,000 Years" is a book length op-ed. It's not useful with respect to economic history.

I don't think that's fair. The majority of the book is a straightforward history of money that doesn't accept received wisdom. Near the end, the author's more anarchist leanings color the narrative. The last two chapters are not as informative, but that doesn't mean one should discount the majority of the book. A few takeaways I have from that book: 1) In rural/traditional societies, debt (measured and stored in peop…

[deleted]

Re: The Invention of Money

#108

Post by rags2riches »

throwaway_gold wrote: post #103
rags2riches wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How popular would gold jewelry be if gold was inexpensive?

Very, if you like high quality items. Unlike plastics and most other metals, Gold is easy to work with (i.e. non-brittle, low melting point, easy to mold/cast, it is conductive so its easy to plate other metals) and it is non-corrosive. Therefore, gold jewelry is historically a finer end product that can be made with less skill and the result lasts longer. To a lesser degree of importance for jewelry, but still a pri…

So when I can get a big fat gold ring for a quarter next to the bubble gum machines at the gas station, you think it will still be good for an engagement or to commemorate 25 years of service because it is so very non-brittle, conductive and easy to melt, mold and cast?

Re: The Invention of Money

#109

Post by malandrew »

panarky wrote: post #41
throw0101a wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... is missing the word 'usury' which was largely agreed to be evil by early religions and societies that experienced its effects... It should be noted that the reasons we borrow money today is different than why it was done in the past. In the past, the "average" person was usually a farmer, and if they needed to borrow money, it was probably because their crops had failed and they needed to money to buy food to f…

> It was unseemly to lend money to someone who, without it, would die. "Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries." "Nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense 'very much' or 'somewhat' contributed to their bankruptcy." https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/hospital-...

If the procedure I need costs more than $1 million such as CAR T-Cell therapy, should others be forced to lend or give me that money even if I have no hope of being able to pay it back?

Re: The Invention of Money

#110

Post by objectivetruth »

malandrew wrote: post #109
panarky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was unseemly to lend money to someone who, without it, would die. "Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries." "Nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense 'very much' or 'somewhat' contributed to their bankruptcy." https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/hospital-...

If the procedure I need costs more than $1 million such as CAR T-Cell therapy, should others be forced to lend or give me that money even if I have no hope of being able to pay it back?

Yeah, interesting question. But in the US, the problem right now is 26-year-old diabetics kicked off ACA plans who have to ration insulin (a drug invented a century ago, given royalty-free to the world by the inventors). Sometimes the rationing fails and they die.

So the question should be - can we as a society afford decent late 20th-Century-standard care to every person? The answer is yes, we can, but we don't.

Post reply on HN