|
|
|
|
|
|
by vladsotirov
3191 days ago
|
|
|
> without the abstractions we take for granted as superior, such as money. That's only true if by "money" you mean coinage, which is a definition so narrow that it also excludes the modern notion of money (you think that's dollar bills you're spending with your credit card?). The Egyptians did have currency that wasn't explicitly coins (e.g. shaped piece of metal), and, at least a 1000 years before they had currency at all, they exchanged items according to the items' value measured in units of metal, even if they didn't exchange the actual metal [1]. Calling this barter (as the linked articles do), from which it's perhaps reasonable to conclude the Egyptians lacked money as an abstraction, is then disingenuous because that's no different than how we exchange goods in the modern world (again, you think that's actual dollar bills that are moving around when you purchase from Amazon? or when you deposit or pay via checks?). What the ancient Egyptians did lack for most of their history is the device of interest-bearing debt (see [2], pp. 217-219). [1] http://classroom.synonym.com/ancient-egyptian-forms-money-57... [2] http://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf |
|
|
This is still bartering. When I order something off Amazon, I don't have to package up an item of equal value and physically mail it to them. This is the fundamental problem that money solves - an abstract, finely divisible, non-spoiling value store.