Seven years ago, just after the financial crisis, the provocative book of anthropologist David Graiber "Debt: 5000 Years of History" came out, where he challenged the world's leading economists and their theories about debit, credit and barter.
Graiber argues that economists are accustomed to believe that the history of the financial development of our society is moving along a strict evolutionary line: first, the ancient people switched to natural exchange (for example, clothes for food), then they guessed to coin gold coins and introducing them as a universal means of payment, and then they had debts, that is, a modern system with banks, credit cards and mortgages.
Although the system at first glance is logical and attractive, Graiber considers it unreliable. According to the professor, in ancient times there was a complex barter system, as well as lending. In other words, financial history is not divided into different stages with the emergence of the first money, because even in ancient society and now always side by side could successfully coexist and there are monetary and barter mutual settlements.
We need to revise this original idea in the light of the development of the digital society, and, in particular, in relation to large technology companies. In recent years, people are particularly worried that Google and Facebook, possessing outstanding technical capabilities, are able to collect a decent harvest of personal data for their commercial purposes.
At first glance, the actions of the technicians remind the operation of unsuspecting users. But in exchange for some personal information consumers get something that can improve their quality of life - a new kind of digital services: interactive maps, instant messengers, directories and useful applications. And like everyone should be happy. The leaders of the technological cluster are telling their users that they are provided with all services free of charge, and you will not be spoiled for this, because no one requires payments. But a group of people and politicians still raise a tantrum about the illegal use of data.
Perhaps the best way to explain these relationships is to call them the ancient term barter. Silicon Valley companies describe themselves as visionaries and pioneers of the digital age, creating innovative models for doing business, but what happens between them and their consumers can be characterized as archaic natural exchange of data only in electronic form. In fact, the simplest exchange of services is exactly the same as it was in antiquity, when hunter-gatherers could exchange berries for meat, and vice versa. Everyone will agree that the economy of the 20th century is based on money, and in the 21st century a specific cyber economy emerged, in which a partial exchange of values takes place on the basis of barter.
Does this matter to us? Anthropologists will definitely say no, and most politicians, business leaders and consumers will not agree. After all, many people are in error about how much they collect personal data and for what purposes they use it. A rare person before registering in a digital service will discover and study the Talmud, where all the conditions and rules are spelled out in small print.
It is fair to say that the new kind of barter, which is much more complicated than historical curiosity, is more difficult to fit into existing economic models and legislation. Economists, for example, can not give an accurate assessment of the digital barter, because they are used to measuring everything in real prices. Mobile applications and other software are too independent and revolutionary things for society, the economic feasibility of which can not be taken into account in the country's GDP. For lawyers, another question arises, how to treat digital barter through the lens of antitrust laws, as Google and Facebook can not simply be misused and proven unless one has charged a surplus price for a product or service.
And yet consumers, that is, users of social networks and services, no one offered a worthy alternative to barter transactions, some Facebook just took and began to use your private data infinitely. In the absence of competitive offers and knowledge of the new economic realities, users do not even know how much their data is worth, because in case of an adequate assessment, they could use them more advantageously.
Fortunately, the time has come when the digital barter was spoken at the political level. Officials want to forbid technical people to completely gather all information about users, and entrepreneurs themselves try to make it clear - and even invest money - in digital barter so that users and businesses can benefit.
All this sounds reasonable, because if we can transform the exchange of data into a full-fledged market, then the history of mankind will make another unexpected turn in development. True, there are still many obstacles on our way that must be solved. Will the detachment be accepted as the basis for data registration at the state level? Will people pay for new cyber services? Will the officials change the legislation?
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