
Shelling Out: The Origins of Money (2002) - walterbell
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
======
danharaj
A rigorous and ideologically alternative viewpoint is expounded in Debt: The
first 5000 years by David Graeber, a professor of anthropology with a leftist
bent. PDF freely available here [1]. It is longer, being a book and all, and
emphasizes anthropological evidence and models, being written by an
anthropologist and all.

[1]
[https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf](https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf)

~~~
canuckintime
In addition — In Defense of David Graeber’s Debt:

[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/09/in-defense-of-david-
graeb...](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/09/in-defense-of-david-graebers-
debt/)

~~~
pmoriarty
A summary of the book from the above article:

 _" Reading Debt is no substitute for serious study of economics... But if you
do get your economics from Debt, you will at least come away with a few
important ideas. First, that money contracts come before, and are about more
than, the exchange of goods. Second, that some monetary systems are based on
commodity money and some are based on credit, and the two behave quite
differently. Third, and most urgently, that decisions about the money supply
are not "too important and technical" for democracy. On the contrary, they are
too important and inherently political to be made any way except
democratically._

 _" Debt’s economic arguments are not always presented as clearly as they
could be. But none of them are present at all in the typical economics
textbook. They are, on the other hand, found in some form or another in the
thought of a great many rebels, heretics and reformers within the economics
profession."_

~~~
soVeryTired
> Reading Debt is no substitute for serious study of economics

The thing about studying economics is that unless you do it to considerable
depth, you'll come away with the wrong conclusions.

Undergraduate economics textbooks teach that central banks try to control the
supply of money as an explicit target, and that commercial banks lend out
their reserves - both of which are objectively false.

 _Debt_ has its flaws, but it at least gets the basic mechanics correct.

~~~
danharaj
Which textbooks get the basics right? Can be technical and/or aimed at a non-
beginner level.

~~~
soVeryTired
I'm don't know of a good textbook that explains it well. But for an example of
a textbook that gets it wrong, see Mankiw's introductory macro book. Mankiw
alludes to the important brake on credit creation (capital constraints), but
dismisses them as 'arcane', then goes on to describe a fractional reserve
system that doesn't really exist anymore.

I've pieced together what I can from reading blogs (Frances Coppola [0] is
very informative in this regard). The Bank of England wrote a document
explaining their view of the process of money creation [1], which is widely
accepted as correct.

Edit: actually, this might do: [http://neweconomicperspectives.org/money-
banking](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/money-banking)

[0] [http://www.coppolacomment.com/](http://www.coppolacomment.com/)

[1]
[http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte...](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q102.pdf)

------
sajid
The author implies that the idiom 'shelling out' has its origins in shell
money, I'm pretty skeptical of that claim:

[https://wordhistories.net/2016/09/21/shell-
out/](https://wordhistories.net/2016/09/21/shell-out/)

------
kqr2
For a look at today's money, see _Modern Money Mechanics_ :

[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5c4DinvHeF2eEpKbFZTOU5CUWs/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5c4DinvHeF2eEpKbFZTOU5CUWs/edit)

