| > False equivalence. The history of economics to economics is not analogous to alchemy and chemistry. You're creating a straw man. Smith, Mill and Ricardo are to economics what alchemy is to chemistry. > As per the myth every student of economics learns, that money grows out of barter. I wasn’t taught that. I was taught game theory, the Arrow-Debreu model and statistics. > Pick up any Economics textbook and look up the definition of "Traditional Economy," here, I'll do that for you. I don’t remember my textbooks saying much about traditional economies. > "A traditional economic system is based on customs, history, and time-honored beliefs. A traditional economy is an economic system in which traditions, customs, and beliefs help shape the goods and services the economy produces, as well as the rules and manners of their distribution. Countries that use this type of economic system are often rural and farm-based. Also known as a subsistence economy, a traditional economy is defined by bartering" I don’t know which textbook it is from. It also doesn’t go much into detail what it means. > We know that's not true. We know there's no evidence to support it. We know that metallic money were the norm during that times. That probably was the intuition and evidence behind the barter idea. > So what does modern economic theory have to say about Traditional Economies? > Not much apparently. > And that's the point! The point you were making initially is that modern economic theory makes false claims about barter. In fact, it doesn’t concern itself with it much outside of niche subfields. That makes Graeber simply wrong. > it doesn't offer much insight into the historical or anthropological questions that Graeber raises. Yes. And it doesn’t claim to. So what is the problem? How can it be wrong about things it doesn’t assert or imply? > Learning or applying MWG in no way subtracts from Graeber's insights. Yeah, but learning about modern economics from Graeber would make you confused and mistaken. He should have had the courtesy not to speak about things he didn’t know. |
thats the point.
> Yeah, but learning about modern economics from Graeber would make you confused and mistaken. He should have had the courtesy not to speak about things he didn’t know. (What is he speaking about that he doesn't know? also, did you even read the book? I'm getting the sense you didn't.)
He's not talking about modern economics, he's talking about the history of debt. This isn't hard to understand.