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Crazy Eyes
Andrewism
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Comments by "Crazy Eyes" (@CrizzyEyes) on "" video.
Clearly we should use this example as the basis of an economy at scale. What could possibly go wrong?
50
@yoeyyoey8937 I agree that more educated economists would likely understand that bartering did not literally work like in Settlers of Catan. However, he is not really strawmanning it, because this is more-or-less how it is taught in American schools, at least.
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@yoeyyoey8937 Because keeping credit is not a business in pre-modern villages. In a modern economy, there is a group of bankers whose job it is to track everyone's debts. They will expect to earn enough money to live off of that. Actually, that's wrong -- it's bankers, so they'll expect to earn enough money to be very rich off of that. Everyone who expects to complete a transaction using a credit system will first go through these middlemen to ensure the integrity of the transaction because nobody knows or trusts each other and may never see one another again. In a village, everyone knows each other. If William promised you something at a certain time and he didn't give it to you, you can just go to his house and ask him what the hell he's doing. You've known William for over 10 years. Chances are, something serious came up like a death in the family and he wasn't just trying to cheat you. If someone is really divergent and decides to cheat people, they usually just get run out of the village. Credit is a system used when trust is low.
5
@SoMuchFacepalm It's not a luxury at all. Imagine for a moment you are a chicken farmer. You have more eggs than you'll ever need to keep you and your family fed. You have a stockpile of extra eggs that keeps growing and growing. There is no way for you to get rid of these eggs. Maybe you don't have any kids or your son(s) are away from home or sick. Or the nearest market is simply too far away. You have to stay home and mind the farm. It's not evidence of "luxury" for you to give away eggs that are about to go bad. Personally, I've never heard of food referred to as a luxury. But it may be needed by other people in your community. You would only consider it a luxury if you had the ability to turn those eggs into money. But that frequently was not possible. We take our modern infrastructure for granted.
4
@rennnnn914 It seems a lot more reasonable when you consider that if you're a farmer, or a hunter, you have a good which is going to go bad quite quickly, and you need to get rid of it. Obviously there are old means of preservation too, but those methods take time and effort. As well as salt, something which was not always available, and was used as its own medium of exchange sometimes.
3
@tissuepaper9962 That's a myth and a laughably stupid one as well. I've heard this tripe before. There was no "pre-Capitalism" as you would apparently describe it. Capital has existed since someone has figured out that a medium of exchange is more convenient than bartering, and people have wanted to hoard capital since it's existed. You're stretching the definition of Capitalism to the point where it is meaningless, since it's only existed in its strict definition for a couple hundred years, and coins and even letters of credit have obviously existed since before then.
1
@tissuepaper9962 Yes, you are. Thanks for agreeing.
1