Or another example: drinks between friends. You do not keep a strict tally, simply you buy one round, then next time you meet they buy one round, etc.
Bottom line is it makes no sense to have complex financial instruments, or even money at all, in a small village or tribe where everyone knows each other and there are other mechanisms (cultural and social) to ensure nobody is abusive. An economy based on gift-giving and "indebtedness" makes perfect sense there. This is likely how most small societies operated, even after the advent of agriculture. You only need to break out the gold/silver when trading with strangers.
I can't tell you how much I love this sentence -- captures a similar experience of mine so succinctly. I keep running into books that I tried to read at a "normal" pace and hated, thought were stupid, that nobody really likes it for real, etc. But then, for different reasons, I started reading books incredibly slowly, and it's like I've entered a secret world.
Some examples, for the curious:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn
The Varieties of Religious Experience, James
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman
Human Action, Mises
Sometimes (e.g. Kuhn) you feel like you've already read the thesis after 50 pages or so, and the rest is just repetition of it.
Caveat 1: I'm not entirely sure you're wrong wrt Kuhn. But there's no way I would have gotten even 50 pages in w/out going incredibly slow and thinking deeply about it -- my general algorithm now with books such as these is to read enough that I have a 'mind-full' of stuff, and then think about how it connects to other things I care about. That (wrt Kuhn) has made the difference between thinking of paradigms as "big-picture stuff that changes every so often in a manner more complicated than we normally consider", to seeing the tendrils everywhere, all the time, in subtle and nuanced ways propagating through all culture. It took the concept of 'paradigm' from a soundbite I could recite when called upon to a plant that has sent tendrils into the foundations of my thought. Maybe I'm a simpleton and others don't need it, but I don't care anymore. A book is a very personal encounter.
The same applies to James, but something else besides: he's just so _beautiful_ of a writer! But it's a languorous kind of beauty that was utterly lost on me until I started reading him slowly. Reading a few pages at a time I've been struck, repeatedly, by his artistry. I would read him for pleasure, even without any insights. Can't tell you what a change that has been.
The tragedy in all this is that it puts the lie to the self-delusion that I could ever read all that is worthy to be read. C'est la vie. I'd rather actually get something out of the books than have the bedpost notches. I know there are hyper-prolific readers (e.g., Tyler Cowen) -- I wonder if they can get both kinds of value? Either way, I can't, so it doesn't much matter.
I often get that feeling of "enjoying the beauty of the writing" with Patrick O'Brian, who was pretty prolific. I've read all 20 Aubrey-Maturin books twice now. Even though I don't understand sailing and ship design at all, hardly, I don't mind it -- I get the gist.
(I was inspired by POB; I'm not comparing myself) Writing my two books, I took the same direction: maybe some people won't get all the technical details, but I hope they won't care, like I don't care that I don't know what "wearing" is.
* The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker
"The language he uses to construct his sentences is like none other I have ever read. It's a vivid mix of nature writing and the best poetry. The text is so dense, the sentences are so packed with words bringing life to action--there really is no reading experience I can compare this to. I could only stand to read a few pages at a time; "relish" not "read" would be the better word there."
My copy is on its way. Thanks for the rec, I never would have found this.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1FWYHXOVPAIQ
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
(Gregory's classic Gifts and Commodities is high on my reading list too, but I haven't gotten around to it yet so I can't say anything specific about it.)
I'll bump Debt up on my queue. Haven't been able to stop thinking about Dawn of Everything since tearing through it, it turns so much about our perspective on how the world operates on its head. And by looking at our demonstrated past, not speculation on unknown futures.
A lot of clashes in the world seem to be capitalism not meshing with those expectations.
A celebrity who is paid millions to be in a movie can be hurt by someone on twitter, with 200 followers insulting they're performance. The person should have no power over them, but does. Maybe that is because it feels like the gifts in the village thing and having your cabbages rejected by a neighbour.
The way we exchange gifts at holidays used to be the way small economies worked, or so i recall the book saying. And thinking about a creation or work of art as being a gift to your community is an idea that seems to make a lot of sense to me.