…in a very localized and narrow market.

It’s not that simple of an answer. If you want to label the past working fine as such you also have to accept and include the living standards and social-economic environment. Because our environment and world and how we live today are vastly different from back then.

How would you barter-trade production parts of a car, the building of a car, and then that car? How would you barter-trade research and technology development?

Without money, do you pay in a narrow, restrictive way like a place to live and food? Or do you pay in something that can be traded like money - where you practically replaced currency money with a different form of currency money?