Debt: The first 5000 years. Graeber is astonishing, and I think there's a ton of untapped educating and organizing power around a lot of the concepts he lays out. Like, it's one thing if we could show that commercial economies and relations of exchange, where any and all social relationships can be cancelled out like any other financial debt, are fundamental products of human nature. But they're not: in fact, most of our ideas about private property come from Roman jurists trying to figure out how to deal with the endless moral dilemmas that arise from owning other human beings. I'll probably do some kind of effort posting about it when I'm done. Lots of fantastic stuff to absorb in this one.
Reading this as well. I'm not cery far into it but it has been insightful already.
It is always a bit shocking to recognizing something you were taught in school and didn't question turns out to be mythmaking, but it also feels good to critically revisit these topics. And the whole section about the origins of currency has delivered in this regard. [spoiler: early societies were much more complex and diverse than having a barter economy until someone was smart enough to invent currency to efficiently trade and establish a free market in the modern sense]
It also gives some perspective on fiat currency opponents, gold standard, bitcoin as a digital gold weirdos, since this has also been somewhere between more complex and a myth.
Started reading it too recently, only 2 chapters in, but love it so far. When he claimed that barter pretty much didn't exist (besides in highly specific circumstances), and the entire idea of “damn, I can't exchange one beer for three fish, because the fishmonger doesn't want beer, I wish somebody invented coins already” is bunk, I was like “no no no, this can't be”. I started googling elsewhere an indeed, there's very little evidence in anthropology, that barter was a widespread thing at all. Mind → blown.
Debt: The first 5000 years. Graeber is astonishing, and I think there's a ton of untapped educating and organizing power around a lot of the concepts he lays out. Like, it's one thing if we could show that commercial economies and relations of exchange, where any and all social relationships can be cancelled out like any other financial debt, are fundamental products of human nature. But they're not: in fact, most of our ideas about private property come from Roman jurists trying to figure out how to deal with the endless moral dilemmas that arise from owning other human beings. I'll probably do some kind of effort posting about it when I'm done. Lots of fantastic stuff to absorb in this one.
The whole bit where he lays out how private property spawned from slavery rocked me, so good
Reading this as well. I'm not cery far into it but it has been insightful already. It is always a bit shocking to recognizing something you were taught in school and didn't question turns out to be mythmaking, but it also feels good to critically revisit these topics. And the whole section about the origins of currency has delivered in this regard. [spoiler: early societies were much more complex and diverse than having a barter economy until someone was smart enough to invent currency to efficiently trade and establish a free market in the modern sense]
It also gives some perspective on fiat currency opponents, gold standard, bitcoin as a digital gold weirdos, since this has also been somewhere between more complex and a myth.
Started reading it too recently, only 2 chapters in, but love it so far. When he claimed that barter pretty much didn't exist (besides in highly specific circumstances), and the entire idea of “damn, I can't exchange one beer for three fish, because the fishmonger doesn't want beer, I wish somebody invented coins already” is bunk, I was like “no no no, this can't be”. I started googling elsewhere an indeed, there's very little evidence in anthropology, that barter was a widespread thing at all. Mind → blown.
My next book. Just finished Bullshit Jobs