Thank you, Herb.

+1 and more

Yes.

Hello dbhalling,
One may even consider the surplus, capital, which would be a time saver/profit to him in the future.
Respectfully,
O.A.

I misunderstood your emphasis. You say my reply is "total ignorance", because I take for granted that which I see as obvious as a given. Of course one need take an accounting to quantify it. I was not disagreeing on that basis or that one need morality and reason to ascertain and establish a hierarchy. Perhaps your ability to be clear in your emphasis of accounting necessity, or that you were equating it with currency was lacking, along with your estimation of my "ignorance." Your second attempt to emphasize accounting and equate it with currency was clearer. Thank you for your clarity, and patience...
I believe the confusion was one of semantics. "Money" vs. currency/coinage...
I have read YOUR article and its citations. Your ancient history of the development of money before barter is plausible, but is it a verifiable "fact"? It is a good theory and may well be accurate, but I was not there and place no importance on the matter either way. It is what it is; but what consequence is the origin to modern economics? What is the value of this information/attribution of origin?
When men traded voluntarily with other men that did not desire the particular goods offered, a medium of exchange was necessary and man invented it. If ancient men could be trusted with credit and others extended it, naturally some medium would be necessary to quantify the debt. Whether dollars, goats or seashells the end is the same.

Good points

Total ignorance. I cited facts above. I explained that in trading with himself, Crusoe was talking to himself. He needed reason and morality.

You provided a retelling of the false story about the evolution of money from barter. That is not what happened. Barter is what happens when money fails. Money came first. It is a fact.

Debt the Seed of Civilization-- "Banking, tabs, and expense accounts existed for at least 2 thousand years before there was anything like coinage, or any other physical object that was regularly used to buy and sell things, anything that could be labeled ‘currency’."
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...

Agreed. Although his profit may include a surplus of fish or wheat or water or building materials.

Alone Crusoe has no traders. No traders no market. No market, no need for currency. With Friday he has a trader and potential for trade. Alone Crusoe's currency is his time, effort, ingenuity... His profit is the future time saved by his efforts. http://hanseconomics.com/2012/04/05/m...

DB.....
If the metaphor is Crusoe alone in his environment, the concept of barter, money and property rights is irrelevant.
Money is a storage of value. In Robby's case, what value can be stored in "money" now or for the future?
If anything, the only thing of "value" to Crusoe is TIME. He can invest time in catching fish for sustenance or figuring a way to trap, cage, pen or collect them with less expenditure of TIME.
In either case, he's trading his Time between potential "investments."
His "property" is whatever he creates or collects in order to sustain his life and/or safety and comfort. He'd have the Choice of investing time in catching fish, building a holding pen for fish or building a shelter for himself to protect himself from unfriendly elements like bad storms.
Still: only One 'Commodity' to "Trade" between "investments"... His Time.
And until or unless Friday arrives, anything and everything Crusoe can touch or use is "his property" and outside of natural destructive forces like storms, for example, there's Nobody Around to challenge such "property rights."
So, I'm puzzled as to why or how that's even near, let alone IN the equation.

But thanks... it was fun thinking about this!

Some scientists are working on the idea of a robot singularity. Since self replicating robots are immortal perhaps as the universe contracts, they set things up so that at least one planet will bring forth intelligent life at the subsequent big bang. Even though the universe is so vast the amount of coincidents needed to bring forth life, not to mention intelligent life, is a number against the odds that requires something like one followed by eighty zeros to one against.

That is the current theory of the Big Bang.

Several points must be addressed. Money serves three purposes: indirect barter, store of savings, unit of account. Accounting is actually the basis for money. The other two derived later. (See the works of Denise Schmandt-Besserat for a full treatment.)

So, for Crusoe, maybe a simple tally board or "abacus" drawn in the sand and marked with shells might be sufficient.(1) He has to know which of his activities are hierarchically worth more in proportion to all others. Otherwise, he is wasting his effort in sub-optimal pursuits, which for him on the island is highly consequential.
(1) The common checkerboard was a counting board in manorial management in the Middle Ages, hence the UK "treasury" is the "Exchequer."

In essence, he trades with himself, just as in thinking, he talks to himself. The primary purpose of language is to enable thought. Communication is secondary.

As you say, he must identify a hierarchy of needs, but more to the point, he needs to quantify it.

As for barter it originated in ritual gift-giving not in the calculation of economic gain, my apples for your eggs. I give you apples, you give me eggs to seal our friendship. Economics came thousands of years later. We know this because in our world, as far back as we have records, no people actually "evolved" from barter to money, but, in fact, devolved to barter when money failed. Moreover, the paleontology seems to support that the first exchanges were for useless things: shells on strings, daubed with red ochre. The giving of pretties to secure friendship was the source of exchange, not economic calculation.

Hello MikeMarotta,
Unless Robinson Crusoe had someone to trade with that preferred some medium of exchange in lieu of simple bartering of wares what would he need money for?

Wouldn't any pursuit one wishes to pursue more than fishing qualify? One must look at their hierarchy of needs and desires to determine what is of more value.

Respectfully,
O.A.

Yeah, I am with most people about "rights." But I agree with you that by working the resources, he makes them his property. He must consider it such and treat it objectively as such. If he attempts to live as a propertyless nomad, he better be on a pretty big island. Moreover, just "living off the land" no matter how abundant it may be will always be less productive of values than if he assumed ownership. Just to take a worst case, the Sioux-Cheyenne ranged all up an down the Great Plains but were severely limited in their productivity. On the other hand, Tenochtitlan was one of the most populous cities in the world in its time, not only supporting 250,000, but having monumental structures, writing, mathematics, and more.

In Defoe's story, Crusoe's resources were more limited. Thus, he needed "property." Nice point. Thanks for the insight.

Nice catch! Caught the foul before it went into the stands…

You can ask, but I think that MichaelAa was making a joke based on logic. The negation of
C<=(A or B) is (A and B).

And that is true. If you are perfectly subjective, then you are perfectly immoral. The immediate consequence of that is being perfectly dead.

? Subjective values logically leads to subjective ethics. Was that you point?

1) Hear hear on the three questions

2) That is a good question, but not one that can be answered (at least specifically) without more facts..

I think Robinson Crusoe needs property rights, but most people think property rights only apply when there are more than one person.

But the source of property rights is that you have created something useful. If Crusoe does not obtain property rights (make things useful), he will die.