The standard story of the origin of money holds that money is evolved “culturally.” The most well known account is the barter myth. Imagine life before money . Say, you made bread but you needed meat. But what if the town butcher didn’t want your bread? You’d have to find someone who did, trading until you eventually got some meat. You can see how this gets incredibly complicated and inefficient, which is why humans invented money : to make it easier to exchange goods. Right? Humans invented money? Hold on a second, there’s something wrong here. Humans don’t invent new social forms. They aren’t smart enough. Imagine that we lived in a barter economy today and I discovered that
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