There may be some value in this, but it is fundamentally wrong from first to last. First: There never was a great age of barter, you needed to have money before you had a lot of specialization. The idea that you could have brewers trying to pay for everything in beer doesn't resemble anything that did or could have happened. Last: Fiat money wasn't something people voluntarily accepted, it's something governments forced on people. Governments required people to pay taxes in fiat money, governments required people to accept fiat money as payments for debts, governments forced people to "sell" their gold.