Barter economy sucks when you actually need stuff, and was pretty much only practiced by long-distance merchants who had no reason to trust one another.

For anything close to necessary in a society, mutual aid is much better, and has a much stronger basis in the historical record. No reason to dedicate half your house to random garbage when you can just have people know you help people when you can and so you deserve to be helped in turn.

And before anyone mentions it, “The tragedy of the commons” is something that very notably didn’t happen to actual historical commons. What few selfish people there are were given their own personal incentive structure, while anyone with a lick of sense took freely and gave freely.

It required capitalism making those selfish people legally correct and backed up by state violence for the commons to die out.

It is this, but instead of everyone needing to pay for stuff storage, we took the value of the stuff and trade to a portable, simple intermediary called money. There’s a reason why money was developed practically everywhere with more than the most rudimentary economy.

Because otherwise the parakeet bones might have gone to waste.

More to the point would the instrument repairer be able to recognise a parakeet’s bones from any other parrot of the same size?

Parakeet is an odd choice for my idea of the sort of person who wants a bone necklace

I feel like stardew has money

Will you take 3 pallets of root beer for a gross of those self-sealing stem bolts?