This is NOT a typical Over My Shoulder piece. It is a part of a philosophical debate on the origins of money (which we jump into mid-stream). The interesting part is that it can be read with the view in mind (which I share) that economics is not a science in any real sense, and the fiction that it is a science leads us to all sorts of wrong conclusions about how the world works and (at least in academic minds) how we should respond. While this paper shows that some of our most treasured beliefs as economists may not be true, it also points to a problem not touched upon: that much of economic theory is based on the creation of mythical stories to explain the interactions of humans. Sometimes the stories are compelling, but when it becomes Keynesian theory and Keynesian theory becomes the ruling paradigm for government action, it can create large problems. Warning: this is not a practical, how-is-Europe-going-to-deal-with-its-debt piece. It's pure theory and philosophy. If that doesn't interest you, then I suggest you move on (though you might want to stick around for the gratuitous sex). This will take 15 minutes, at least. From Graeber's conclusion: "At this point, it's easier to understand why economists feel so defensive about challenges to the Myth of Barter, and why they keep telling the same old story even though most of them know it isn't true. If what they are really describing is not how we 'naturally' behave but rather how we are taught to behave by the market—well who, nowadays, is doing most of the actual teaching? Primarily, economists. The question of barter cuts to the heart of not only what an economy is—most economists still insist that an economy is essentially a vast barter system, with money a mere tool (a position all the more peculiar now that the majority of economic transactions in the world have come to consist of playing around with money in one form or another) [10]—but also, the very status of economics: is it a science that describes of how humans actually behave, or prescriptive, a way of informing them how they should? (Remember, sciences generate hypothesis about the world that can be tested against the evidence and changed or abandoned if they don't prove to predict what's empirically there.) "Or is economics instead a technique of operating within a world that economists themselves have largely created? Or is it, as it appears for so many of the Austrians, a kind of faith, a revealed Truth embodied in the words of great prophets (such as Von Mises) who must, by definition be correct, and whose theories must be defended whatever empirical reality throws at them—even to the extent of generating imaginary unknown periods of history where something like what was originally described 'must have' taken place?"