The Hierarchy of Money (gregorygundersen.com)
43 points by gwgundersen 2 hours ago
hypfer 2 hours ago
I feel like this is either AI-generated or severely lacks context.
There might be a point in there, but it might also just be paragraphs of text with little structure joined together.
What's the narrative? What does this want to tell me? And why?
Something like an opening header block with 2-5 sentences would go a long way.
jubilanti 7 minutes ago
It is also totally wrong. I got to the third block and quit, as this is just an LLM bullshit version of the 18th century bullshit fantasy of the origin of money (see David Graeber's Debt).
You can't describe how various forms of monetary value work in the modern monetary system as if it were a rural village with physical items, because it is fundamentally different.
RivieraKid an hour ago
I just copy-paste the text and ask AI to summarize for 90% of articles I see on HN. One of the most time-saving uses of AI.
pasquinelli 29 minutes ago
doesn't that mean you spend time reading the summary of articles you wouldn't have read on your own, and thus it wastes time?
hypfer an hour ago
That answers the what, but not the why. The why however I'd argue is a lot more interesting.
Also, you can often derive the what if you know the why and just follow the thread and map it out.
markvdb an hour ago
The part where the bat wielding despot required payment using the money of his issue was left out.
stymaar an hour ago
> The villagers are tired of bartering
Come on… It's been known for more than a century that bartering has never been the default mean of exchange among humans, can we kill this myth eventually?!
zahrevsky 30 minutes ago
Not only bartering has never been the default mean of exchange, but also the idea that money were created to optimize the trading process is also wrong.
For an item to become currency in a society, it must already be something people value independently of its use as money, and people must expect others to accept it as well. Say the villagers live near the sea and find some beautiful shiny stones that everyone wants. Those stones can then become currency.
A good example of this is tobacco in colonial America. It came to be used as currency because it was already widely traded and valued.
compiler-guy an hour ago
This is obviously not an attempt at anything remotely resembling documentary history. It’s more of a just so story explaining what problem each step solved.
Unless of course one thinks that smooth gray stones from a riverbed two miles away reflects some historically significant point in money’s evolution.