Yeah I'm glad you are well read on the topic :D the use of shells and rice is for sure older than the Silk Road, I just didn't have an estimate of the dates so I opted not to go with that lol.
We for sure need a medium of exchange as well as a sense of purpose. That's what helps keep us motivated and going. I think this "post money" thing is just a lot of academia bullshit, you know how they like to push what they think is a utopia but it ends up being a mess.
Communism is a scary thing because it shows how willing people are to be evil in order to just get by or get the attention off themselves. It's an abysmal way to live and I would say it's a "failure" but that's only in the eyes of the citizens. It works brilliantly for the evil people in charge pushing that!
Gosh, yes. The ancient Egyptians used grain as a store of wealth and I think that was wheat or a similar grain. That would have been up to 5000 years ago and I believe rice was farmed before other grains ever were?
I often bump heads with my mother on utopian ideals.
"But if everyone just..."
"do you really think everyone will?"
"But if they did..."
"But they aren't going to and you can't control that, so there's no point getting your hopes up or getting worked up about it"
It would be a darn boring world if we all thought the same anyway.
I always think of the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" when it comes to communism. I'm not even sure they start out evil, but it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, when you crave the power enough to want to enact them you're going to end up corrupted.