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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Money develops out of market exchanges. Money was not used for its own sake initially, but it becomes widely used as money as a result of innumerable transactions within the economy

This also doesn't appear to be true: see David Graeber's book Debt: The First Five Thousand Years for his descriptions of how money actually emerges from religious ceremonies and temples, not barter (as most econ books have it) or "market exchanges."

(Incidentally, I don't agree with Debt's main implications about debt, but its anthropological work on money is fascinating! (https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/thoughts-on-debt-t...)

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I wouldn't trust Graeber, as he is frequently wrong about easily verifiable facts in such a way that it supports his world view. There's no reason to trust a liar when he tries to tell you something you don't know about. My favorite Graeberism is when he describes the founding of Apple:

> Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages

but there are plenty others, an exhaustive list of which would be inappropriately long for a HN reply. This isn't one of those things where people don't understand computers, this is one of those things where someone just completely makes shit up. He's also a somewhat unhinged and deeply horrible person. Discussed here by Brad Delong who is about as far left as real economists come: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-fo...

Uh, thanks for pointing to this. I found an article detailing this a bit more[1]. This is a inaccuracy that is quite telling about the quality of research this author is going to offer.

1 http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-wall-street/archi...

That's astonishing. Caught in a lie, he first denies it, then backpedals and immediately blames someone else who is clearly not at fault. My already-low opinion of him is now even lower.

Thanks as well. I've been intrigued by Graeber, though I've also suspected him of an ideological bias. Not that economic orthodoxy doesn't suffer from a similar bias. DeLong's list of howlers is going to get some strong looking at.

Graeber's response to the criticism doesn't instill much confidence in him. Though DeLong setting up a taunt-o-matic is a tad interesting....

Thanks for reminding me of that quote - it's rare you find some much hilarity packed into a single sentence.

Great comment! Thanks. I updated the post.

2nd follow-up (can't edit my first). Wow, the DeLong piece is really epic. Graeber's caught in multiple errors (or faleshoods, or lies), gets epicly trolled by DeLong (a bit harsh, but ... on balance, called for), retaliates with taunting, name calling, and legal threats, anything but an "um, sorry, yeah, you were right", and ...

As I said before: Graeber's premise is interesting, but he's definitely tainted goods from here on out, and I'll have to verify any of his claims/statements before using them elsewhere.

Pity.

Graeber has responded to criticisms as well, though I find his answers somewhat lacking:

http://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/02/seminar-on-debt-the-firs...

I'm reading Graeber's book. The origin theory he settles on is that money was created by the state. Kings produced coins, gave them to soldiers, and mandated that the citizens accept the coins as payment for goods. This created a market, and solved the problem of how a kingdom could supply the needs of an army (weapons, clothes, and food).

He does thoroughly deconstruct the barter origin story, by showing that barter economies were actually driven by credit (and thus credit pre-dates money).

The story about religious ceremonies and temples is that in pre-market societies, there was a social currency (wampum, copper rings, special cloths, etc) used for ceremonial purposes. It was when market economies (and market currencies) became entangled with the social currencies that you see the development of slavery.

Given the shadow thrown on Graeber's credibility, I'd say you'll have to treat him similarly to Wikipedia: not a credible primary source. I also found his origin-of-money passages fascinating, but would have to trace those to their sources before I'd believe them.

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