Barter, Reference Goods, Split Barter
So this is barter: a fish for two eggs, and so forth; eggs are media of payment for fishes, and the other way round as well. Then barter evolves.
An evolution is toward a uniform unit of measure: amongst all the products exchanged, some are taken as “reference goods” and used as units: a cow, a sheep, a grain of wheat.
We use the term “medium of exchange” or “medium of payment”, and “medium”, from Latin, means “something in between that connects”. The “mass media” are those means of mass communication that connect what someone intends to communicate with those it is communicated to; the “media of exchange/payment” are those means that connect those taking part in an exchange of survival factors.
Edwin Clarence Riegel wisely defined what we do by way of media of payment, such as any form or money, “split barter”; the discovery, and the clarification, are that: a) we’ll never do anything else than barter, exchange of product for product, and b) media of payment, by separating the two sides of the exchange, do allow us to always and efficiently exchange what we want to give for what we want to have… but nothing more than that!
The value of this definition is not only clarifying an apparently obvious and easily overlooked basic, but it is as well implying that any attempt to set up a medium of exchange that goes beyond sheer split barter of actual products is fraud; criminal, suppressive fraud.