Re:You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die
by antepodius on Sunday April 12, 2020 @09:05AM
(#22847991)
People trading 'things' like favours is pretty natural in that it happens easily. And it's not like the waters of the world are pure and safe to drink by default. There's plenty of parasites and diseases out there. How many hunter-gatherers do you think didn't have worms?
> People trading 'things' like favours is pretty natural in that it happens easily
The author seems less concerned with what "happens easily" than with what is taken as a kind of natural law. The dominant ideology of the present (for which he is presenting an intellectual history) supposes that market forces are this natural law. It is this supposition that cannot stand up to long term history. We are better off reading anthropology and sociology when trying to understand the origins of money and exchange than we are economists, who simply invent facile notions of their origins seemingly out of thin air
Oldest anthropological sites in the world appear to have been used for religious ceremony (community building) and trade (economics). The economists aren't terribly off the mark.
This article seems to want to return to a pseudo-Rousseau view of the world where the wilds are religious.
You could make that argument, but there appears to be a positive correlation between robust markets and clean drinking water for everyone.
> there appears to be a positive correlation between robust markets and clean drinking water for everyone
Given the context of this article, it's then worth asking: were the "markets" of the Magdalenian also "robust"?
Is that the "natural" order of things? Certainly it isn't, at least no more than markets or money represent a "natural order." In fact, we can make a convincing case that the tainting of fresh water is the direct consequence of this kind of market-oriented thought.