YouTube Transcript:
The Origins of Money by Carl Menger Chapter 3 - The Problem that Led to Money

welcome to our video series about the
origins of money by Carl Manger in this
video we describe chapter 3 about the
problem that led to money as a medium of
exchange in early trade people were slow
to realize the advantages of exchanging
goods in the beginning their goals were
simple they mainly focused on getting
what they immediately needed this meant
that when they traded they were only
interested in acquiring goods they could
directly use if someone offered them
something they didn't need or already
had enough of they would simply reject
it because of this the opportunities for
trade were very limited think about how
rare it is that two people each have
something the other values less than
what they would get in return and how
much rarer it is that those two people
would actually meet and agree to trade
the situation becomes even more
complicated when one person wants to
trade an item that isn't easy to divide
or when the trade involves multiple
goods owned by different people for
example suppose person A wants something
from person B person B wants something
from person C and person C wants
something from person A under a simple
barter system this type of trade would
almost never happen because all three
parties would have to agree at the same
time
these difficulties would have made trade
nearly impossible especially for goods
that didn't have regular demand without
a solution economic activity would have
remained very limited and the production
of goods that weren't guaranteed to sell
would have been discouraged the solution
to this problem however emerged
naturally from the fact that some goods
are easier to sell than others this
difference in how easily goods can be
traded is extremely important for
understanding both how money developed
and how markets work in general
economists have long overlooked this key
point when trying to explain trade and
money which has left a serious gap in
the understanding of how money works a
proper theory of money has to start with
an understanding of why some goods are
more salailable or easier to sell than
others once we understand why some goods
are easier to trade we can see that
money's near universal salailability is
just a more extreme version of a general
pattern in economic life the fact that
some commodities are naturally more
marketable than
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