Hi, I'm also like @creatr, found your article really interesting but have to weigh in also, about a different aspect of your article, the anthropological evidence for the origin of money. I'd be interested to see what your references are for this point of view, or influences at least. So my critique is in the spirit of friendly debate, just so you know! 😇

While I agree that the money origin story of barter is unfounded, and it is based on debt, some of what you say sounds like another kind of myth. No smart person ever invented money and it just caught on. From what I understand, the origin of money is in tracking the debts of unfree people, who worked for temple complexes, starting in Mesopotamia, which were the first densely populated areas in the world (that we know of). These were always tracked using various kinds of ledgers, from simply cutting marks in sticks (remember these people were largely innumerate) to clay tablets. Before this, we had a kind of communal living where things are shared, which has never stopped being the main way that the necessities of life are made available to people. For example, in the primordial tribe you mention, and the clan, family, etc.

What you're actually taking about with coins and tokens are different kinds of currency, which are used to pay debts, and are a different way of organising debt. What I mean is that a currency system is not required for a money system. The actual physical item is not primarily scarce, it is primarily valuable. This is to say that it is highly valued by the people who use them within that society. Where gold is used, we find people wearing that gold to show social status. Where shells are used, we find them used to make dyes, jewellery, or involved in religious rituals.

But this is not universally the case, we can also buy and sell the debts themselves, and the form of this is always passing around the thing with which it is recorded. Bank notes are actually little pieces of debit, and in the UK still say "I promise to pay the bearer such and such", a statement from the head of whatever bank it is. They are IOUs.

This means that to say a currency is "backed" means that those debts can actually be paid, so if everyone in the country said they wanted the value of the debts they have to be paid in whatever it is backed by, that it could be actually be paid. It's more complicated than that of course, but that's the gist. For example, in the UK the banks were founded by an initial loan from the king, which was never and can never be paid, or there'd be no money. But it's not in anyone's interest to do that anyway.

Another aspect I disagree with is that markets exist independent of the state. One of the rights the sovereign takes (be it king or government) is to set what people are allowed to use as currency, which since large scale warfare has always been intrinsically tied to what one can use to pay taxes. There was some time in the US where tobacco leaves was allowed to be used as currency I think, but I can't remember if this is totally true 😅 Anyway this is one of the reasons why cryptocurrencies are so interesting, they are not used to pay taxes and purely stand in as a way of managing debts between people, but yet are not controlled by a central authority, which currencies have always been. However, I think those debts essentially are backed by real world currency, since they can be cashed out into it. But I might be wrong about that last point 😜 Not only that, they seem to be controlled not by a central authority, but by a distributed one.

Anyway I think I've gone on long enough :D Again, enjoyed your article and I'd be interested to hear you response if you like. My source for most of this is Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Greaber, a very interesting read for those of us who don't have an anthropology PHD. I'd recommend it highly.