The notion that philanthropy resulted from the invention of money is a pillar of classical economics. It is also a myth. After more than two centuries of searching for an indigenous society that approximates Adam Smith’s parable of the original barter system, anthropologists have concluded that it can only be imaginary. “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing,” wrote Cambridge anthropologist Caroline Humphrey in a 1985 paper titled “Barter and Economic Disintegration” in the journal Man. Instead, researchers have discovered that philanthropy is far more central to human social organization than economists had ever imagined.
The notion that philanthropy resulted from the invention of money is a pillar of classical economics. It is also a myth.…
This suggests that Adam Smith wasn’t so much chronicling the evolution of modern market economies as he was observing what existed during his time and then projecting it onto the human past.…
Evonomics
What Philanthropic Organizations Need to Know about Giving
Eric Michael Johnson
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