Who here read David Graeber's "Debt: The First 5000 Years?"
I'm curious what peoples' thoughts on it. I already have my own thoughts on it, but for something I'm working on I'm interested in hearing what people on Nostr think about it in their own words.
Damn now I have to read this asap so I can give you my thoughts.
Brb.
Yeah, sorry. Havent read. Will load it up now tho, so thanks for the rec
waiting for your book!
Love seeing you on nostr. Adding this to the top of my ever growing book list.
Very encouraging to have heavy hitters like Lyn on this platform!
Good book. There’s this part in chapter 6 I wrote down and keep in a note. Made me think of Bitcoin a lot differently:
“Often, such currencies are never used to buy and sell anything at all. Instead, they are used to create, maintain, and otherwise reorganize relations between people: to arrange marriages, establish the paternity of children, head off feuds, console mourners at funerals, seek forgiveness in the case of crimes, negotiate treaties, acquire followers—almost anything but trade in yams, shovels, pigs, or jewelry.”
Zaps?
Will put it on the reading list, thanks!
🗣️mic check
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Its intresting and makes some sense to me. Its been a few years but if i remeber the premises of the book correctly you could TL;DR the book as "money and credit was made to keep track of debt"
So I guess I'm between the two schools of thought. If money and credit was made to keep track of, and settle debts then I think the idea of "money being an emergent property of the most saleable good that keeps value over time" was a quest for efficiency of debt settlement.
The use of gold or whatever was used as money in whatever era was just the most effective thing to settle debts at the time. The medium has always changed. But harder moneys seem to last the longest.
Or i guess to rephrase a bit. The systems of debt settlement that are based in hard moneys seem to last longer than systems that are not.
18 hour audio book...at 2x... Let me get back to you tomorrow haha.
Noted
my reading list
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You could cut to the chase by reading the goodreads reviews. It sucked me in just now. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617037-debt
I disagree with a lot of it but it provides interesting points and historical arguments for things.
That's why I was curious to hear peoples' thoughts.
Often when I write about money I get an email like, "but have you read Graeber?" and I'm like, "oh here we go again" because it takes time to address.
Keep fighting the good fight and spreading your incredible insight Lyn!
I like to listen to big books so I can get a quick preview of the content.
Its still sitting in the shelf. I got intimidated. :)
Lyn, it seems to me that a) 90% of banks are feeling like they may NEED to raise more capital… b) it’s now gonna be very hard and very expensive to raise capital through equity and debt right now… so, do you expect banks to just bleed down for foreseeable future? Massive consolidation coming? 1,000 banks => 10 banks type of thing? Thanks, ml
Would love to hear what you agree with, but especially what you disagree with in regard to the book.
The one thing I remember. Was that for a lot of history Debt had to be repaid no excuse. Even if it meant full enslavement of your immediate family until it was squared. That sounds scary to be on the wrong side of. I guess they had some skin in the game when playing with other peoples money 🤔
Not yet to read it. But watched his speech about debt.
From his research that the debt had always been a first cause of most rebellions/revolts in the last 5000 years.
And the interesting part is, we got the knowledge that the barter was the first transaction method. But, in his speech it was a Credit.
It's been many years so I'm rusty but I was very surprised to learn the deep historical precedent for debt jubilees. Like, empires somewhat regularly just forget about everyone's debts? What? 🤯 Very eye opening.
The thing I remember most was him giving the example of the checks of British sailors being used as currency in Hong Kong bars, and the statement that having the reserve currency is great... it's like writing checks that no one cashes. Until one day you have a crisis of confidence and then everyone cashes their checks at once.
It's a great visual, and I try to imagine all the treasury bills floating around outside the USA and when they will flood back domestically to be cashed... a tsunami of paper promises
Margaret Atwood’s book Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side of Wealth is another zinger of a read. It’s based on a series of lectures that was turned into a book. It explores the psychological aspect of debt. In case you’re not familiar with Margaret Atwood, she is the prolific Canadian author, most famed by her book - The Handmaid’s Tale (another prescient work)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback:_Debt_and_the_Shadow_Side_of_Wealth
I took out of it the idea the idea credit style human relationship money is foundational to him- and that totally anonymous money is correlated to violence and large scale slavery type societies where the individual is ripped from their social relations.
I felt it was thin on the details on the social benefits of careful accounting and rather glamorourized personal relationships. It also ascribed alot of weight to the relationship of money to conflict- but I felt sovereign individual, which I'm reading out, feels more I tuitively clear to me on that topic.
I want more time because it is THICK.😹
"Read it" (audio) twice. Really like the anthropological perspective and for some reason the Narrator's (Grover Garland) voice kept me interested. Kinda reminds me of KITT from Knight Rider. This book triggered my thoughts about what money actually is.
I searched for some indication of what Graeber's perspective would be on Bitcoin. Still not sure and alas we lost him in 2020.
It was the first big book read on what is money when it came out. It started the rabbit hole. Parts were slow and boring but it laid the foundation of questioning everything you thought you knew about money.
It’s on me reading list
Debt predates money and has been a fundamental feature of human societies for thousands of years. I appreciate his critiques of modern economic systems and the ways in which they contribute to inequality and social unrest.
Your post is getting a lot of likes.
Added to the https://member.cash/hot feed
Interesting book in that it helped me understand the reasoning behind the predominant modern narrative concerning money and the financial system. But I don’t know enough about the subject to have any thoughts on the actual merits of the arguments in the book.
I think his idea that debts/grievances/guilts are innate to human societies, that they pre-date money and markets, and in some important ways bind us all together, is a fascinating concept. That was the biggest takeaway for me. The perspective makes sense considering he's an anthropologist but I thought it was interesting nonetheless
It was also a favorite of Wences Casares when he was orange pilling Silicon Valley types in 2013-14.
That’s a seriously long amortization schedule.
(Maybe our next loan term to a failing bank?)
My main takeaway was that the often described "natural" historical evolution path of barter, shells, gold, banking etc don't have any sufficient antropologic proof of being true.
And if not true, why is that story so often told and who benifits from it being presented?
I read it and liked it. While it felt longer than it needed to be, it had a lot of great stuff and certainly made me think more interesting thoughts about the origins of money than, say, the Bitcoin Standard (which was borderline unreadable).
I loved that book along with all of graebers other work . the fact he died so early shows we are on a bad spot in the multiverse
Can't imagine writing a history of money and deliberately not mention bitcoin. I bet it has something to do with his background. However, busting the myth of barter at scale was valuable to me.
Well it was published in 2011, so it could be that it was written during/before the beginnings.
I'm aware of that, although it was republished a couple of times after 12 July 2011. It's a valuable book overall, I'm just saying an author in good faith would have updated when better info was available. It definitely a must read for anyone interested in how the sausage is made. :)
Haven’t read it…
I read it. What I liked: dismantling the Econ 101 myth of "in the beginning, there was barter everywhere". I think it fell short on many fronts. It could have gone deeper on the idea of the necessity of "measuring" as a precondition for trade, especially between people who don't have a lasting relationship. And of course I wish it had considered the incredible breakthrough that is Bitcoin. Don't regret reading, but not many eye opening ideas for me. Did you like it?
In small communities where people know each other, the exchange is based on credit. Money is a product of war and robbery.
As the scale increases, an inversion occurs.
In large communities where people do NOT know each other, the exchange is based on money. Credit is a robbery tool.
Read it some years ago, found it interesting as a counter argument to the usual first they bartered with shells myth/story. Seems logical that in tribal societies there would be debts first between members (cows, bride price, whatever) that would be on a handshake basis or adjudicated with the chief. Later moved to a ledger at the temple and in agrarian society a bushel of wheat, etc. could be accounting unit and off to the races as trading networks spread one searched for more durable, universal form of money. #debtprecededmoney
Based on memory these are my main takeaways:
- Debunking with empiricall evidence the presumption held by most economists, that money evolved out of barter. Barter is for strangers and enemies. In communities/tribes credit/ledger-based systems was the norm.
- The strong role debt played in the brutality of colonizing America, and facilitating the slave trade among tribal leaders in Africa.
Adam Smith`s “debt” to Islamic thinkers
- The 1971 and onwards explanation of the transition to the petro-dollar system.
I find it strange that an anarchist leaning thinker like Graeber subscribes to the idea that only state (or sovereign) money can work in the long run. As I remember, he claims that attempts at private money always fails. At the same time he describes how coins (and credit systems like the tally sticks) continued to exist for hundreds of years after the empire who coined them ceased to exist.
Nevertheless, one of the most eye-opening books I have read. All books and thinkers should be a starting point for your own thinking, not a source of truth to subscribe to.
If someone finds the length of the book a bit daunting, I can recommend an audio short version Graeber made for the BBC. It`s also easy to get lost in all the historical examples in the book, so this mini-series gives you the overall picture, and you can choose to dig deeper on what you find interesting.
For those who find the book too long.
Sharing my, and others', response to Lyn's question
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Readable, but selective account of monetary history with communitarian bias. This "historical" approach to money is always distorted by the fact that "quantitatively" for most of human history and cultures, monetary phenomena were linked to cult-based and tribal social relations, whereas "qualitatively" the smaller subset of catallactic monetary phenomena (cooperation between foreigners) are materially and, eventually, culturally much more important. So, this communitarian bias boils down to Graeber's anarcho-primitivist bias. I appreciate him for being much more straight-forward about it than most history romantics.
I thought his idea of starting from communism was bunk until I paid attention. Getting over the baggage of the word this is still easy to see all over. Bitcoiners giving newer bitcoiners books on the topic. I was given a ham radio by another ham after I got my license. Helping friends and family move for beer and pizza. Small groups still work the way he describes.
Haven’t read it, working through Dalio’s ‘Principles for a New World Order’. There is a lot of discussion about the debt cycle in there. He also has a book on the debt cycle in detail, but obviously you would have read those. Curious how you see them compare to Graeber’s work, sounds like there is overlap.
Great read. But when I started researching it the core message appeared not to be true. Typically Graeber
I am 70% of the way through the book, since hearing you talk about on Preston’s podcast. At a high level, I like the book, the endless anecdotes are interesting. However, I find it hard to generalise them into a high level takeaway.
Would graeber be a bitcoiner if he was still here?
My thoughts: The ledger preceded currency. Creditors have been enforcing debt repayment on the ledger with a wide range of tools ranging from guilt to imprisonment or worse. Those tools were tailored to an increasingly specialized debtor population. Specialized debtors we’re paid in currency. Currency has historically been debased or inflated. We have been iterating on the ideal currency since the beginning of debt. The blockchain backed systems we are zeroing in on as the next form of ledger eliminate the concept of currency and provide an irrefutable, instant, and affordable way of updating the ledger.
The last part may be wishful thinking.
I agree. The ledger predates all.
Local money, of the people, for the people and by the people, ideally, is the future of money.
It can be issued by the local government or by an Association or DAO.
The local money may have features like UBI or oxidation.
It may be exchanged with other local money, Bitcoin or Fiat with different mechanisms.
Its been awhile since I read this but it seems to me you kinda got to treat it like quantum field theory. It has tremendous descriptive / predictive value so something is clearly correct but the math is impossible. Graeber's book is a bit like that and its the framework in which it is elaborated which is very hard to pin down. Is it Venetian 12th C treatment of debt or Aztec treatment of debt ? In his narrative they can occur simultaneously. So best I think to treat it gently and with respect and see what can be learned from a somewhat loopy [ at times ] narrative. A bit like art I guess.
yep, I read it about 8 years ago. was similar to The Lost Science Of Money... i'd need to skim through it to remember... I will soon.
I’ve read summaries and I find the thesis ass-backward.
I’d rather look at evidence of proto-economies in our primate cousins, like the monkeys in Bali that hold tourists’ stuff ransom for food: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/14/balis-thieving-monkeys-seek-bigger-ransoms-for-high-value-swag-study
Or these monkeys that learned to use money and began paying for sex with it: https://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/
Both examples of money usage and functional economies among non-human primates with no evidence of any debtor relationship
More specifically: examples of other primates acquiring an item not for the intrinsic value the item has, but because it will enable them to get something else from someone else at a later time (THAT is money)
I thought it was interesting, though he seemed to heavily draw on the experiences of just a few anthropological niches. The connection of debt and slavery was the strongest part IMO
As with much of Prof. graeber's work it took very dry, polarized and over trodden subjects, back to their human fundamentals.
His thoughts are not so much something to build a society on as to measure a society against. Especially in the light of Austrian fundamentals he reminds us that if the likes of Elon or Thiel interpret free markets to mean anti-human extremes, we reserve the historical right to burn it all down.
Jubilee years, credit and debt as human drama and displays of affection or forgiveness, pre dating scientific ,economoc or state analysis, does what it was his job, force you to think.
His depth of thought left Thiel somewhat at a loss for words in their public discussion/debate. Thiel did not win, Graeber did not win, but you come away with the feeling that if Graeber somehow were to lose and get lost in the narratives of the technocrats, we are all fucked.
A great book about people, and people are what matter.
