From wikipedia:

Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence that societies relied only on barter before using money for trade.[73] Instead, non-monetary societies operated primarily along the principles of gift economics, and in more complex economies, on debt.[74][75][76] When barter occurred, it was usually between strangers or would-be enemies.[77]

  • @TootSweet
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    35 months ago

    I’m not terribly sure what your response has to do with my comment in particular.

    Yup. Capitalism is built on a foundation of lies.

    This thread is specifically about one of the lies in question. And I gave another example. You don’t seem to be arguing that those lies aren’t indeed lies, so if I’m understanding your arguments correctly, what you’re trying to get at is that neither “barter was a thing before money” and “homesteading is a thing that actually happens/happened” are “foundational” to pro-capitalist thought and “the foundation” of capitalist ideology is instead something along the lines that “quid pro quo and keeping score are human nature and money is just an abstraction thereof”. Yes?

    I’m saying that I find the existence of counterexamples (as well as the whole “gift economies were the norm before money” thing, and that capitalism has existed for a great minority of the time anatomically-modern humans have been around) a compelling reason to be skeptical of that stance.