But the home was very important for other reasons, again overshadowing the economy. Now people buy homes based on where they can find jobs, or even experience forced moves from their jobs -- this would have been unthinkable then.

A third interesting factor of early economies is the goal of self-sufficiency that individuals had. Large amounts of wealth were not really attainable, and the basic goal of the time was to have everything you needed. This was the definition of success, whereas poverty meant you were dependent on someone else, not just underprivileged. This leads to a fourth point Polanyi makes, specifically about kinship-organized societies. These groups especially tended to have little extraneous wealth, so there were very few exchanges that actually changed economic status. Such exchanges almost always marked major occasions, like proposals and/or weddings. The principles of exchange in these times were either utilitarian or symbolic, and not...
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