The Origin of Money - Austrian Economics with Steve Horwitz

[@robertcarpenter8077]

Nice. Steve's talks are always so clear, so concise, and so convincing.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

any thought on David Graeber's book Debt, suggesting that credit/debt systems actually predates metal money and that large scale barter wasn't ever really a thing, except maybe as a fallback for people who were used to money?

[@Liberty7628]

There is no contradiction. Neither Smith nor Menger claimed large scale barter existed. In fact, any sophisticated division of labor existing with barter would’ve challenged Smith and Menger, as it would’ve called into question why a medium of exchange would’ve been necessary. The fact of the matter is that discovering indirect exchange is what enabled civilization, i.e. large-scale integration of many different peoples into a division of labor possible. As for the claim regarding credit, there is no contradiction. Ancient credit constitutes inter-temporal barter, which is barter nevertheless.

[@ChitranjanBaghiofficial]

umm, the crypto also follow it, as we need to buy mining machine, to mine it, hence it is based upon comodity, but rather than single comodity the very comodity is made up of other comodies like copper, gold, silver etc that goes into the mining machine. Miners make sure they make their money back on comodity and along with comodity it also uses energy.

[@robertcarpenter8077]

Well yes and no. Mengers point about money originating as a commodity is to say why the price of something in terms of gold is always so stable. Just the opposite can be said about bitcoin whose price is a violent whirlwind of fluxation, of staggering volatility. For instance: Would you buy a house IF the contract was denominated in bitcoin ?

[@Collectorofsats]

Bitcoin is better money than gold ever will be. Austrians love bitcoin

[@patricksachs3655]

Bitcoin doesn't even fulfill the most basic requirement to become money: It's not a store of value and therefore cannot be used as s unit of account. Those who are acquainted well enough with Austrian economic theory know all this.