《货币外传》(Money: The Unauthorized Biography)，作者：费利克斯·马丁
经济史学家认为，货币是作为以货易货的替代方案涌现出来的。这个故事据说是这样的：我们交换鱼、玉米或工具（我们所有的物品，包括易腐和能永久存放的东西），直至货币横空出世。它是一种更高效、更稳定的商品——一种润滑市场的交易媒介。在马丁看来，这种观点存在严重缺陷。这是一种仅仅基于幸存物来描述的历史。他说，对于货币系统来说，硬币其实并没有那么重要。比如，一些文化中是用不可移动的巨石来衡量财富的，再比如，在如今的计算机网络世界中，财富可以由一系列1和0组成。正是这种误以为货币是一种实物，而不是一个政治概念的思想，促成了不平等的现代金融体系，亟需深度改革才能变得公正合理（马丁认为我们应该解散银行）。
Money: The Unauthorized Biography, by Felix Martin
Economic historians argue that money emerged as an alternative to barter. The story goes: We traded fish or corn or tools (all our goods, both perishable and permanent), until money came along. It was a more efficient and stable commodity — a medium of exchange that lubricated the markets. For Martin, this view is deeply flawed. It is a history that only relies on what survived. Coinage, he says, is not essential to a monetary system. Witness some cultures where wealth was measured by giant, immovable boulders, or today, where it consists of a series of ones and zeros in a computer network. It’s the misunderstanding of money as something real, rather than a political concept, that led to our unequal modern financial system and it will take serious reform (Martin thinks we should break up the banks) to make it just.
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