14 de maio de 2013
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Have you ever wondered why people need money?
Have you ever wondered why people need money? `To live on, of course!` you say. But that isn't strictly true. Try eating a coin. People live on bread and other foods, and someone who grows grain and makes his own bread doesn't need money, any more like Robinson Crusoe did. Nor does anyone who is given his bread for nothing. And that's how it was in Germany. The serfs cultivated their fields and gave a tenth of their harvest to the knights and monks who owned the land.
`But where did the peasants get their ploughs from? And their smocks and their yokes and the things they needed for their animals?`Well, mostly by exchange. If, for example, a peasant had an ox, but would rather have six sheep to give him wool to make a jacket, he would exchange them for something with his neighbour. And if he had slaughtered an ox, and spent the long winter evenings turning the two horns into fine drinking cups, he could exchange one of the cups for some flax grown by his neighbour, which his wife could weave and make into a coat. This is know as barter. So in Germany people managed perfectly well in those days without money, since most of them were either peasants or landowners. Nor did the monasteries need money, for they too owned a lot of land which pious people either gave them or left to them then they died.
Trecho do livro "A little history of the world" de E. H. Gombrich. Pag 144;
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