Conversations w/ Great Minds - Dr. David Graeber Debt: The 1st 5000 years P1

[utubesqueeze]

@hallavast

Of course, in the last 40 (since 1971), it seems the following is also true:

fiat money -> debt mountain much greater than sustainable global growth

Maybe in future:

debt mountain -> community + violence? [ a combination of deleveraging and reverse globalisation due to protectionism and rapidly increasing demographics taxing all resources ]

If so, then we will come full circle...

[hallavast]

"Violence is necessary for money in debts". I think this is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In the situation described, there are alternatives to threatening violence. "X cows or this means war" could be changed out for "X cows or this means an end to our doing business with each other". But even so, violence is not a state. A monopoly on violence is a state. So the "state before money" idea isn't a necessary truth.

[utubesqueeze]

@hallavast

1. He didn't "X cows OR this means war" . He said the concept of money naturally arose from the quantification of debt required AFTER an injury, i.e. as compensation.

2. Regardless of how a state is formed (though most states across all history required copious violence in formation), the state not only has a monopoly on maximal violence, but also from this necessarily stems the rights between entities.

[utubesqueeze]

@hallavast

Historically,

gifts + debts -> community

community + violence -> state

state + monopoly(violence) -> rights

rights -> quantity(debt) + technology -> physical money

physical money + organisations -> paper money

paper money + violence -> war debts greater than physical -> fiat money.

Barter is outside of all of these and normally only occurs when money used to exist or between enemies or complete strangers outside of the state.

[MARMOTEER1423]

all his ideas are built around "potential for violence." people create structures within their society to provide security. this may be through laws, or through "violence." this is a horrible way of putting it. if he does have any good ideas at all- they're not coming across

[dagohsteuro]

@MARMOTEER1423 ur a fucking moron. they aren't coming across to you, apparently, but I think that is your fault and not his.

[MARMOTEER1423]

this man may or may not be brilliant, but he is a horrible orator with bad presentation of ideas and concepts.

[juliaisafilmbuff123]

Money sucks.

[homoeroticfood]

The banks need to accept that mortgages need to be restructured by reducing the amount owed. The US government should have forced this debt restructuring by attaching conditions on bailout money - at once recapitalising banks' balance sheets and expediating the process of deleveraging.

[homoeroticfood]

Think about this: there are just as many houses now as there were before the crisis and just as many people who need to be housed. An efficient market would be able to house everyone. So why hasn't it been able to do so? Why are banks kicking people out of houses? The banks have in effect lumbered unecessarily excessive debt on people, and, therefore, on the market as whole. People are paying $500,000 debts for things which are now worth only $300,000. The banks need to accept that mortgage

[homoeroticfood]

The bailout of banks in the US/UK was a total failure. It was meant to 'secure' the financial system via recapitalisation which would allow banks to lend to each other and to firms and to consumers but none of this has happened. People have been left with debt on houses whose values were inflated by bank lending which then suddenly 'lost' substantial value in a matter of months.

[TheNixonYears]

nice to have another great contemporary anarchist voice

[powergirl901]

Thanks to Graeber to spell out the explicit use of violence (or threats) that underpin our capitalist leanings here (USA). I always felt that use of money was a life or death proposition, but didn't know the history of this system.

[KenMacMillan]

He's weird.

[CrackaDon1]

The co$t of living keeps goin up across the board and the co$t of paying us 99%rs keeps goin down around the board. WTF! FUCK THAT!

[oneirishpoet]

awesome post, two of the great minds in the world today, David Graeber & Thom Hartmann...if only the majority of people were able to understand the ideas they are discussing we'd be a MUCH better country!

[treefittyfive]

typical liberal: all we need is some debt forgiveness! let's have people do work for us, and then not repay them for their labor! it's all part of the business right? and if they get mad, just declare war with them and kill them! disgusting. i'll never trust someone like graeber.

[Antiks72]

@treefittyfive That's a nice straw man argument you got there.

[oneirishpoet]

@treefittyfive yeah the only reason you won't *trust* someone like David Graeber is because your tiny conservatard lizard brain isn't able to grasp the concepts discussed by him, probably cuz like most Repiglickers you're a functionally illiterate moron...and don't worry I'm sure Dr. Graeber doesn't lose any sleep knowing that idiots like you can't understand his intellect, asshole...also, too :)

[newsradiohead]

@treefittyfive You obviously haven't read Graeber's book. I suggest you crack it open and get educated. Graeber argues that banks and loan companies ALSO have responsibilities, in this case the responsibility to make sensible loans. For instance, he argues that if you went into a bank asking for $100 million because you have a good feeling on a horse race, the bank has a responsibility not to make the loan. But banks and loan companies have been recklessly making loans they knew (cont.)

[newsradiohead]

@treefittyfive (cont.) people could never pay back. They made these loans because they knew that the government would side with the creditors and enforce contracts against debtors (no matter how slimy the terms of the loan were), and if worse came to worse, they would get a bailout from the government, which is what happened. Debt forgiveness would be the most just thing the government could do after all the intolerable acts of the banks. 

[filestreet]

@treefittyfive a) graeber's not a liberal, and b) did you even watch the video?

[piedlin10]

I love how at 10:46 he asks him to riff a little bit on the topic.

[Ebareebaveebeedee]

Lets hope we invent working robots and we can finally put behind this capitalism vs socialism arguments.

[WilhelmDrake]

Dr. David Graeber is definitely a "Great Mind".

[GodOfTheInternets]

Anarchism FTW.

[brscic]

Really interesting interviewee,.. Very intelligent person,.. 

[newsradiohead]

Amen, brother. Capitalism is a state-sponsored program. Market fundamentalists should deal with it.

[cpbbailz]

I think the world needs a resource based economy.

[OriginalTharios]

@cpbbailz I somewhat agree, but unfortunately it's true that conventional concepts of resources are too subjective to make a difference. There is, however, one resource which is absolute and universal...Energy.

All matter is merely condensed energy, and the energy we appear to use is that which is transferred between particles of matter. Therefore, the only viable resource-based economic structure possible is to account for every unit of energy involved in every form of transaction. (con't)

[OriginalTharios]

@OriginalTharios And when I say every unit of energy of every transaction, I mean it...down to the electrical and chemical energy expended in making a decision.

Obviously, that's impractical, but then we measure nothing else that accurately, so it's reasonable to simply have a flexible system that can cope with those inaccuracies just like now.

Since energy is the only universal resource, it is the only viable measure of the value of goods or services.

[igoronline]

@OriginalTharios I`ve come to that conclusion myself, when thinking about interest in general.In this line of thought, interest becomes not just immoral, but downright dangerous - the lender adds no real world value to his product(the money), but ends up devaluing the buying power of everybody else`s money since he can acquire more out of nowhere.

[GodOfTheInternets]

@cpbbailz

Anarchism (at least communist anarchism) does believe in the abolition of money, but not in the sci-fi technocracy aspect of the Venus Project.

[cpbbailz]

@GodOfTheInternets The sci-fi aspect is meant to provide the utmost efficiency, however it comes across as if humans would be treated like products on an assembly line. So I agree, the abolition of currency should be from the bottom up, not top-down.

[GodOfTheInternets]

@cpbbailz

That's not what I meant, I meant that the sci-fi technocratic aspect of the VP is unrealistic.

[GodOfTheInternets]

@cpbbailz

Again, no matter what is is supposed to provide: IT's IMPOSSIBLE!