Considering that modern humans have been around for roughly 200-300’000 years but the oldest known form of money / standardized currency dates back only 3000-2500 bce, what would today look like in a alternate reality where the concept of money was never conceived? Like I guess some form of “the market” has always been around, but still… what if?
You must log in or register to comment.
Look into the concept of a gift economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
Communities would have social norms revolving around the exchange of goods without expectation of sone kind of payment. You do what you can to provide for your community, and in turn your community provides to you as well.
In pre-history, it was believed to be mostly social obligation, gifts, and verbal debts. Such systems work when the groups are very, very small and communities can enforce debts and obligations through social pressure. As the other poster said more succinctly: social credit.
After the domestication of animals, animals and plant products were used as money.
Social credit
Where I am we have a community. We all help each other, loaning tools or labor, giving gifts. No need for credits or trade most of the time. We just all take turns when someone needs it.
Few weeks ago we had some fresh eggs, we gave it to our neighbors that gave us some tomato plants a few weeks earlier.
Most likely it would be a barter system. Really money is just a standard system of value given previously. Theoretically a modern world without money would be if you ran a database for a farm in exchange for say 10 chickens a week and your rent would be say 12 chickens a month. Then you go around shopping for a new apartment but get denied because the apartment complex already get paid too many chickens and are now only accepting new clients paying in potatoes. So now you have to find someone willing to exchange 12 chickens a month for 200 potatoes per month.
It could potentially look like a timebank (https://www.timebanks.org/). Timebanks are a means of exchanging labor wherein everyone’s time is valued equally. By performing services for someone anywhere in a timebank network, e.g. hOurworld.org, you receive that time which you can then use to receive services from someone else.
We only got money in Australia 250 years ago. Before then we had communism, and it was awesome.
It seems to me markets without currency are rare and temporary, so I don’t see markets working in this world of yours. Only way I see this possible is when the tribe’s surplus was never claimed. In a myriad of different tribal constellations, having none that assigned the surplus stockpile seems very unlikely. So this world can only exist before central stockpiling it seems to me. A bit like the description of the Native Americans in Engels’ Family, Private Property and the State.
