It’s not unlike the economies of ancient Mesopotamia. A farmer who wanted beer would write a promissory note for a few bushels of barley in some clay and give it to the brewer. The brewer could then either wait to collect it at harvest, or trade that note with someone else for something they needed. This would be passed around until it ended up in the hands of people with real wealth, and if the farmer couldn’t pay the wealthy person would take whatever they wanted.
It’s thought that this is why in many near Eastern societies women are expected to dress plainly, as they wouldn’t be chosen when the rich asshole showed up to collect on his debt. One way some societies solved this problem without violence or slavery was to eliminate all debts every several years.
This is from David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” and I highly recommend it.
In the bible, the regular elimination of all debt was called the “Jubilee”
