Great read on the Banking System http://www.mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf Small excerpt on Barter
Which of course points out the need for a medium of exchange. We call it "money" but could as well be bags of salt. Or boxes of pebbles, if an agreement could be reached as to how many bags of pebbles a side of beef was worth, and then translate that into eggs, hides, bushels of wheat or pairs of shoes. Then the shoemaker could use his collection of pebbles to buy beef, eggs or hides as needed, and monkeyman could get his eggs from the hide trades. (Could be bags of gold pebbles as well as crushed granite, I guess.)
Or keep the hides for whatever else and just get paid for cutting up the critters to pieces other folks could use instead of full sides (or things walking around going MOOOO! lol) that other folks didnt know wat to do with.
Thanks for posting this. I don't have time at the moment to read the PDF, but it looks to be very interesting so I downloaded it for later.
