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Comment by tibbetts | Hacker News Reader

Breaks down instantly when you try to define which activities count as businesses, or try to define why individuals are offering goods and services to one another.

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  "define why individuals are offering goods and services to one another."

Because these individuals think it's mutually beneficial to enter into the trade. This explains all voluntary cooperation including barter and modern trade. I sell my goods and services to someone who needs them because I can then go and buy food with that money. Currency obfuscates this picture a bit but its only role is to solve double coincidence of wants. Underneath it is just barter via a layer of indirection.

How is an individual offering goods and services to one another not a business?

Is a Wikipedia author participating in a business when they update an article, thus contributing to the service of a better encyclopedia? Is an open-source programmer doing business when they post their GPLed source on the web? Is gift-giving (offering a good) business?

That definition seems to be a bit too broad. So maybe there needs to be compensation. But then the determinists would say that even gift-giving has compensation (in the form of reciprocity) and thus isn't much different from credit. So the compensation should be something closer to monetary compensation. But then barter economies have no businesses. Etc.

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