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Bitcoin is Venice: Difference between revisions
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{{Drop|A|nd trust in}} each other is a feature of a community, not a bug, and not something that can or should be solved by [[technology]]. It is ''the'' feature, in fact, on which the whole edifice of civilisation is based. Farrington would have done well to read a bit more Graeber here. | {{Drop|A|nd trust in}} each other is a feature of a community, not a bug, and not something that can or should be solved by [[technology]]. It is ''the'' feature, in fact, on which the whole edifice of civilisation is based. Farrington would have done well to read a bit more Graeber here. | ||
Currency has its antecedents not in [[barter]] between strangers, as is commonly supposed, but in ''[[credit]]'' amongst friends: currency would not work between hostile strangers because it is a personal promise of deferred satisfaction, and the a hostile stranger does not trust in promises or pieces of paper or bits of metal as abstract symbols. This is a matter almost of literary, and not financial, theory. Of shared meaning. I hand over my muskets for your blankets as their respective meanings to each of us is obvious, and does not depend on the other’s. Indeed it depends on a relative ''divergence'' in meaning: you must value muskets more than blankets, and I must value blankets more than muskets, or we have no deal. | Currency has its antecedents not in [[barter]] between strangers, as is commonly supposed, but in ''[[credit]]'' amongst friends: currency would not work between hostile strangers because it is a personal promise of deferred satisfaction, and the a hostile stranger does not trust in promises or pieces of paper or bits of metal as abstract symbols.<ref>This is a controversial view, and certain economists dismiss it. Notably George Selgin, to whom Farrington defers. Prior remarks about paradigms are germane here: economists claim this as their territory, though anthropologists should have just as much to say about it. In any case, Selgin’s rebuttal is peremptory — essentially, “[[Adam Smith]] said currency originated from barter, that’s good enough for me, and the fact that there’s no anthropological evidence for it doesn't prove anything, and in fact may be evidence of [[survivorship bias]].” Or [[confirmation bias]], perhaps. Graeber’s account has something else going for it: it seems intuitively right, in a way that Smith’s view does not. There is a longer discussion at our review of Graeber’s book.</ref> | ||
This is a matter almost of literary, and not financial, theory. Of shared meaning. I hand over my muskets for your blankets as their respective meanings to each of us is obvious, and does not depend on the other’s. Indeed it depends on a relative ''divergence'' in meaning: you must value muskets more than blankets, and I must value blankets more than muskets, or we have no deal. | |||
Given how fundamental this dissonance is to any market it is extraordinary how much hostility its necessary premise — there is no objective truth — generates. | Given how fundamental this dissonance is to any market it is extraordinary how much hostility its necessary premise — there is no objective truth — generates. | ||