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

Dr. David Graeber, professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London on his book - Debt: The First 5000 years. How the concepts of debt and credit have defined human history and what this means for our current credit crisis and the future of our economy.

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• The First 5000 years

[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...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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

[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