this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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money != capitalism
In economies where no official currency exists, some commodity always becomes a de facto currency so that people can make trades that are too complex for bartering (I'm not carrying 2000 bushels of corn on me, but if you'll accept these bits of metal in exchange for your plow, you can trade them for corn or whatever else you want).
Every concept that could theoretically replace this function is just currency again.
I disagree. There were money/curencyless societies. These societies had things like library and gift economies (concepts I support). While it is true that we can have money and a post-capitalist society, money or any concept which is pure resourc value. Can lead to an easement of resource accumulation which is one of the building blocks of capitalism. I am not that good at explaining stuff in comments, but Andrewism (a realy cool youtber whom introduced me to Solarpunk) made a video about whey we have to rethink our picture of early resource sharing (bartering) to be able to imagen a world beyond the restraints off currencies. https://piped.adminforge.de/watch?v=W-gdHrINyMU
Name 5, with populations higher than 10,000 and that were stable for >2 human lifetimes (~150 yrs).
Bartering only works in small volumes, for localized economies, with relatively small communities. It doesn't scale, and it isn't flexible enough to allow for more complex forms of work. For instance, what would a web server administrator barter to a farmer for food?
As per andrewism, bartering works primarily off credit: I don't need to bring my four cows to trade for your 1000 bushels of corn because if I lie about the conditions of my cows there's gonna be an angry community at your back. Doing so inherently creates a high-trust society.
How is this "credit" not just a form of currency? Isn't it just a stand-in for the value of your cows that you want to trade?
High trust maybe, but extremely localized. It requires that a person who wants to trade knows the reputation - the credit rating - of every other person they might trade with. This model of trade can't scale.