From wikipedia:
Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence that societies relied only on barter before using money for trade.[73] Instead, non-monetary societies operated primarily along the principles of gift economics, and in more complex economies, on debt.[74][75][76] When barter occurred, it was usually between strangers or would-be enemies.[77]
If you want to learn a lot more about how economies worked in the past, I highly recommend the book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber, author of “Bullshit Jobs.” It goes into this topic, and then presents a very detailed world history of economic systems from the perspective of an anthropologist.
Graeber’s work, as always, is truly incredible. Such a shame he died so young
His last book, “Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real LIbertalia” is pretty good if you haven’t read it, if you don’t mind a lot of Malagasy names.
That book radically changed my worldview, and then I read The Dawn Of Everything and it was changed again.
Came here to say exactly this.
If you want to dive even further into why the foundations of modern macroeconomics are bunk, then I can also recommend reading Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.
I’ve been meaning to read that book for a long time but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Definitely give it a try. It’s one of the books that helped me understand the terms “scales falling from my eyes.”
There were multiple books that helped you understand that term?
There’s been a few of them. A People’s History of the United States, 1491, and Humankind are some good examples
Thanks for the recommendation! I had a reminiscent Reddit reflex, where I looked the writer up to see if it wasn’t a ‘guns, germs and steel’ type of popular history, but was pleasantly surprised.
I have a bunch of reading to do now. Cheers!