[gspencley]

> Money is a unit of exchange that exists to compel action. That's the point of it

Citation required.

Money is an intermediary form of exchange. It arises organically because if, for example, you are a dairy farmer, there is no practical way for you to a) save enough milk to barter for a house (not only is it perishable but where do you store it all? Especially before refrigeration) and b) find someone with a house they want to trade for that much milk.

Money is just a commodity and in the absence of fiat currency it arises organically. People tend to seek intermediary forms of exchange that are non-perishable, easily divisible, transportable and difficult to forge/counterfeit because it is a necessity of life.

You simply cannot practically barter everything you'd ever want to trade. So instead we humans trade what we produce for something we can stash away and trade later more easily.

Money is not an invention to compel action. It is a natural product of trade that arises because most people, when they're not too busy spouting ideological drivel on Internet forums, have common sense.

[NoGravitas]

The barter myth is just that, a myth. Barter has never been observed in any society that had not previously been using money. Money, in fact, appears to arise not organically, but from the need early states to maintain standing armies. Creating markets denominated in currency allows you to simply pay your troops rather than maintaining their entire supply chain even when not on the march. And then requiring that taxes be paid in currency gives everyone a reason to accept currency for payment. It transforms your entire economy into a machine for feeding soldiers. This is not a thought experiment like the barter myth; it is documented in ancient sources from India, Mesopotamia, and China.

An article treatment: https://archive.is/20250725000932/https://www.theatlantic.co...

A book treatment (that of course covers many other things): https://archive.org/details/DebtTheFirst5000Years

[TheCoelacanth]

That's not how barter really worked in practice.

Pre-modern societies generally had very little currency and only used it for large transactions. Smaller transactions happened through debt and transfers of debt.

The transaction wouldn't be "I give you a bunch of milk and you give me a house" it would be "You give me the house and I'll give you milk every day for the next 5 years" or something like that.

Or it might be "Bob owes me a calf the next time his cow gives birth. I'll transfer that debt to you and give you eggs for a year and you give me the house."

Vendors who have debt relationships with a very large number of people would often get together with other vendors and swap debts to consolidate them into a more manageable number of debts.

Even if the debt was denominated in units of currency, it was typically settled in goods rather than currency because typical people just didn't have access to much currency.