On social currencies and human economies: some notes on the violence of equivalence – David Graeber

The way out of the trap was discovered only in the modern era, with the appearance of a new system based on trust in the future. In it, people agreed to represent imaginary goods – goods that do not exist in the present – with a special kind of money they called ‘credit’.

From the very beginning, money was invented to facilitate the sharing and exchanging of goods and services among individuals and groups of people. Money still facilitates the sharing and exchange of goods and services, but somewhere along the way the power we gave money outstripped its original utilitarian role.

Quando os economistas falam sobre a origem do dinheiro, por exemplo, eles sempre consideram a dívida algo secundário. Primeiro vem o escambo, depois o dinheiro; o crédito só se desenvolve posteriormente. Mesmo quando consultamos livros sobre a história do dinheiro, por exemplo, na China, França ou Índia, o que geralmente encontramos é uma história

In this sense, the value of a unit of currency is not the measure of the value of an object, but the measure of one’s trust in other human beings.

Human nature does not drive us to “truck and barter.” Rather, it ensures that we are always creating symbols—such as money itself. This is how we come to see ourselves in a cosmos surrounded by invisible forces; as in debt to the universe.