HIST 1180 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Making Money, One Unit, Reciprocal Altruism
25 Oct 2016
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3 fundamental origins of money: barter to trade related to economics. Direct exchange of goods without a medium of exchange. Emerged out of the division of labour. Seen as a natural innovation from the market: gift debt; iou related to anthropology, tribute tax related to political science. 4 functions of money: medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, symbol of value. Barter, in-depth the supposed limitations of barter: double coincidence of wants. Both participants must have an equal amount of desire for each others item offered for trade: no common measure of value. Adam smith, forefather of economics (scotland, 1723-1790), believed that bartering was an innate human drive. How did we go from barter to money: specialization, stockpiling. Key points: bartering involved mutual interest, property, money, and markets existed before political institutions, theory based on an assumption about human nature (the innate human quality of trading and bartering)
