It's possible that Graeber is close at least to being correct on this. Barter was never a serious mode of exchange. Never! Money did NOT develop from barter. From what I remember from my reading re Palace Economies, some pretty complex accounts were kept; we don't have many of them today from Mycenae etc because they did not bake but merely hardened the clay tablets upon which the accounts were kept; then they would be soaked in water and reused. We have some because apparently fire was involved in the events which destroyed Mycaenean civilization and that baked some of the tablets. They had been used to keep accounts of how each sub-region sent in the proper amount of goods to the Palace. I was a highly bureaucratic and centralized system, but no barter or money as far as I know.
Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: Friday, June 29, 2012 11:54 AM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Query: RE: Neoclassical Economics and the Foreclosing of Dissent - The Inner Death of a Social Science true, but with barter accounting would involve lists of inventories with no prices attached. On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 9:52 AM, michael perelman <[email protected]> wrote: > Not entirely different. They developed geometry to figure out how > much tax farmers would pay. > > On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 8:28 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> Didn't ancient Egypt use barter, so that its accounting was very different? -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, you should at least know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
