mulberry_seas

Isn't it coercive in the sense of the monetary "rules" being hard-coded? Lawrence Lessig says this is "East Coast Code" as opposed to West Coast Code in his book "Code 2.0".

Anyways, even if it is non-coercive in the sense of having no West Coast Code or legislative coercive forces at play, you can still learn a lot about monetary economics in such environments. This author is interested in the emergence of monetary exchange, and that's a pretty big literature for instance, going back to Menger's "On the Origin of Money" (though Menger does note the later imposition of standardization from political authorities, etc.) and more analytical work such as Duffy & Ochs (1999).

This literature on the emergence of currency/monetary exchange from barter exchange typically understands such emergence to occur independent of any such force - all you need is the existence of the problem of double coincidence of wants. What I have in my inventory may not match what you want to trade for in your inventory, so some object that is marginally more "saleable" in the sense of being more widely desired, easier to carry, etc., will emerge as a currency standard. Also see Radford (1945)'s study "Economic Organization of a POW Camp" where cigarettes emerged as a common currency.

I had the same thought. I initially believed that the Web would be the replacement for the Catalog, but it really isn't - it lacks curation. I've never really found any place on the Web with a similar level of curation; maybe OpenCulture, but even that's kind of a firehose. If anyone knows of any places out there, I'd love to hear recommendations.

Do you have a reference for where Benjamin wrote about this? I found this excerpt from "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": "With the emancipation of the various art practices from ritual go increasing opportunities for the exhibition of their products. It is easier to exhibit a portrait bust that can be sent here and there than to exhibit the statue of a divinity that has its fixed place in the interior of a temple. The same holds for the painting as against the mosaic or fresco that preceded it."

But wasn't sure if this was exactly what you were referencing, or some other piece.