Book about the origin of debt by the anthropologist david graeber, also wrote bullshit jobs.
I tried reading it I really did, I hoped to get a lot of historical info about debt but instead he keeps slapping his retarded thesis everywhere, basically that debt predates money and that currency arises from debt, rather than bartering. Just go to a jail dawg and look at their currency seriously. Besides that it's also a 400 + page slog and I couldnt will myself through it no matter how much I tried.
Just realized I repeated my self but fuck it
OP, read this instead
I read the first half and lost interest several years ago. I thought some of his ideas and factoids were pretty interesting. I think the argument that debt predates currency and bartering is pretty convincing actually. And actually if you go to jail (i am assuming you havent been) you will see that there is a pretty complex web of debt and debt enforcement. Forwarding some one a honeybun is a way to keep them in your pocket etc.
>Graeber's parents, who were in their forties when Graeber was born, were self-taught working-class intellectuals in New York. Graeber's mother, Ruth Rubinstein
>Rubinstein
It was Joos after all. When do we have a jubilee?
>Just go to a jail dawg and look at their currency seriously.
Not saying he's roght but couldn't that just be because they come from a society that uses money and are familiar with the concept?
Currency in prison is white bois’ assholes
Thanks Ill check it out
he is 100% right about the historical origins of currency. it is a means of systemic account, not a commodity-of-commodities. there is near consensus among historians and anthropologists on this. 'barter economies' only really seem to occur in circumstances of collapse or isolation from already existing market economies--as in the case of prisons. that is to say that, rather than being a primordial form of the market economy, barter systems are derivative or degraded from them.
Yeah, OP, I’m not sure you read those sections carefully enough. He explicitly addresses bartering in prison economies:
>In POW camps and many prisons, inmates have indeed been known to use cigarettes as a type of currency, much to the delight and excitement of professional economists. But here too we are talking about people who grew up using money and now have to make do without it - exactly the situation “imagined” by the economics textbooks with which I began (Debt, 37).
You’re right that Graeber’s thesis is both overly simplistic and aggressively categorizing, though. I was more frustrated by his refusal to describe the “proto-credit” systems of pre-capitalism as resembling barter in any way. Even if
the shoes-for-pig exchange is not occurring in one simultaneous transaction; exchange of goods, without currency, between two individuals who mutually understand the exchange value of their items and expect to receive a value equivalence (regardless of how long the equivalence takes to be achieved) is definitively bartering.
is there a lot of graphs/images/diagrams in it? just want to know if i can listen to the audiobook version
It's possible, but bartering in prehistoric areas with currency has been recorded. Also credit often involves bartering, he defines bartering as an instant transaction, but a farmer has to barter in order to take a credit, ie I'll trade an ex for a pig in a week, unless their is a money system involved, or communism. But early records all show transactions. I guess the book appeals to post marxists type people but not for me, sad because there could have been a lot of good history.
you are missing the point. graeber's argument is against the 'commodity-form' or 'simple medium of exchange form' of money. this doesn't mean people did not exchange goods, nor haggle over a fair trade. the form the 'credit system' historically takes depends on the community, state, etc. but nowhere do you find a group of people deciding collectively to simply accept an arbitrary item as if it was equivalent to whatever it is they want to exchange it with. that isn't how money works now, either.
Opened the thread just to comment that I'm starting to read pic related, it's in the cubby in the break room at work. Starting to read the series, generally.
I don't know much about econ but I'm becoming slightly more interested in reading real stuff apart from the Marxist fluff, would like to read wealth of nations at some point and some very basic crash course (maybe not even a book for this, an online resource of some sort) in micro/macro and supply side vs demand side. I'd be interested for any more knowledgeable anons to comment on the subject. I already know of the "so you want to stop being a dumbass shitter" flowchart for economics books, but if someone feels like reposting it, by all means. I wonder why the OP bothered making a thread about a book he clearly doesn't want to read, it must have been assigned to him in college or something.
Didnt read this reply, you beat me to talking about proto credit. I know he used that example in the book but it was unconvincing to me. It seems like his main arguments are contradictory in some ways. Also he states that trade must occur with an equality of value, clearly a mistake as trade can never occur with an equality of value, but rather an inequality (actually makes trade worth it)
No I read it because it was the best historical/economics book I could find at a barnes n noble with a gift card. Not asking for a cliff notes summary
I meant specifically when he claims historically barter was uncommon and societies relied on ious but he defines bartering in an odd way. He focuse on commodity money. Another idea of cash and barter being limited to low trust situations is true, however he acts like society could transition to operate off community iou, seems to imply he supports anarchy otherwise it wouldn't make sense how a mass society would function (ie low trust situations)
i get you. he is an anarchist, and i think he's a little...tendentious in how he presents the evidence. he's also half-in half-out a marxist framework, so it confuses his analysis a bit. i think the basic argument, though, against the narrative of mainstream economics as to the history and development of currency-based market economies, is sound and well supported, not only in his own book, but by the general scholarship in the relevant fields.
>he states that trade must occur with an equality of value, clearly a mistake as trade can never occur with an equality of value, but rather an inequality
I disagree with you there. If there is one attribute besides currency itself that distinguishes the "proto-credit" system from currency-aided exchange and modern credit systems, it is the absence of the need for profit. This is Graeber's best point, but he doesn't state it explicitly enough. The need for profit emerges out of impersonal exchange – if you and I exchange goods, I want to benefit, you want to benefit, but you have no inherent interest in my benefiting from the exchange (and vice versa). In pre-capitalist systems, this type of "impersonal" trading doesn't exist. Goods are mutually attained and shared for mutual benefit. This system does not encourage accumulation. If I accumulate more goods than you have, then, as your neighbor, you (and all our neighbors) expect that I share with you. So it doesn't really benefit me to accumulate more goods than you. So it doesn't really benefit me to engage in a trade with you that would give me an economic benefit over you.
The hard part here is establishing economic terms for the "mutually attained, mutually shared" societies. Graeber's proto-credit thesis is an attempt to quantify that society. It adequately describes it, yeah, but like I said, I think it's too categorically restrictive.
read it. liked it.
you're not antisemitic enough if "graeber" didnt tip you off
>I tried to read an anthropological study about debt and got a thesis
No shit, have you never read a nonfiction book for adults before?
I read it and I didn't really care for it. I don't care about these appeals to the past in an effort to change things now in a leftist manner.
Entertaining read to some degree but it gets bogged down every now and then
>I like my debt just fine, thank you.
Weird people
Never read anthropology before, had read history and econ, usually historical theses are better supported and less contradictory. Seems like he wants to fit the history of money into his ideology and that is disappointing to me
The most interesting part was when he looks at the economic histories of medieval Europe, China and India. Unfortunately Graeber jumps from time periods and places as suits his argument, and the anthropological stuff on older civilisations is pretty assumptive. There's interesting content in the book but his main argument is a bit weak.
no
But he's right. There is no evidence of barter being a main mode of exchange. Currency is, and has always been, debt. I don't know why leftist are so afraid of that concept, it's woven into human biology. Debt can not only relate to commodities, but services as well. Even a simple system such as taking turns doing the dishes is in essence a debt system. If you've ever argued along the lines of "If you do the dishes now, even though it's my turn, I'll walk the dog once when it's your turn".
There's nothing _inherently_ evil about debt, although leftists do have a point about how exploitation of debt often leads to undesirable circumstances.
i can see why this book is divisive for the ancaps and extreme centrists round here.
If you think that statement is divisive, you don’t understand economic theory
so exactly as i said.... divisive to ancaps and extreme centrists.