Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Here's an impressive economics book that isn't even precisely about economics.

It's properly anthropology by an honest anthropologist. If it were actually written by an economist, it'd be devoted to actual coinage and a priori arguments, not with an eye to what was actually going on.

So, what's the meat? Well, economists bring up an old, oft-repeated fairy tale about barter systems, how they become super unwieldly super quick, and that's why another symbol for exchange must always be created so they can all work together easier. But in reality, as seen through actual anthropologists observing reality, there's a much more obvious side to it. In order to get along and survive, money was created as a form of social currency, of trust -- and that is what debt really is.

A person might willingly sell their social standing, putting them lower than another, in order to get the goods they need to survive. That's employment. Enslavement is quite similar, always getting boiled down to hierarchical social standings and enforced with violence, with the whole thing reduced to a system of running debt. Of course, nothing works in a vacuum. It's all a social construct, with religions running the same gambit and ingraining the IDEA of debt in everyone's minds.

"You can never repay your parents for raising you, so you better do extra good for your offspring."
"You can never replay your god, your country, your wife, for all they've given you, so you must remain perpetually in debt to them."
"We house and feed you, slave, you can never repay your debt to your slavemaster."

I mean, obviously, some of these sound really good, and others, not so much, but the idea of self-sacrifice, or just plain sacrifice, is embedded in not just our economics, but in every kind of social structure, and so much returns directly to the idea of debt.

Now, here's a funny little thing: throughout history, there's the commonality of the abuse of debt and inequality -- and its correction. The forgiveness of sins isn't only for Catholics. The forgiveness of sins is the same as DEBTs. Hammurabi used to run a yearly debt-forgiveness party. Hell, the Rosetta Stone itself is super famous for being the bridge between ancient languages, but was anyone taught what it ACTUALLY SAID? It was talking about a debt forgiveness. :)

That brings us back to the obvious inequalities on how debt is treated across the world and time.

Debt is OFTEN forgiven for those who have high social standing. The rich get a welfare state. The poor are usually enslaved or pushed to the point where they EITHER revolt, or they are given their eventual debt holiday.

What we're never taught is that this is a common cycle. We often put others higher above us on the debt cycle, making kings, celebrities, or religious leaders, freeing them from the burden of debt and putting ourselves in the yoke. When it gets abused, as it always does, tons suffer, and it either devolves into bloodshed, massive hardships for the lower classes, or debt forgiveness of some smaller or greater effect.

You can talk all you want about supply side economics or the divine right of kings, but all of it circles right back to the core: across all cultures, debt of all flavors has been around since recorded human history. It's primarily a social structure passed from generation to generation, a symbol of intertwining interests and social cohesion -- but it's abuse is also almost eternal.

Just look at our modern world, creaking and straining on immense loads of debt, where the grand majority is squeezing normal people to death, with the super rich just shrugging off the burden of that debt as if it were nothing but a social guffaw. As if it was just an annoyance that they could cancel at any time. As, indeed, it actually is.

If that makes you a bit angry, then join the club. When the pressures of debt build up too much, then, historically, that's when the weapons come out and the class war begins.

It's easily solvable, of course. Erasing the debt also erases the social webs that keep or society in place, but if so many are suffering, then we need to ask if those social webs were worth keeping in the first place.

I, for one, absolutely love seeing corrupt rich mf's getting away with the worst shit imaginable, having all their debts welfared, while everyone else gets inflationed into utter poverty.

(Yes, I am, indeed, being sarcastic.)


That being said, what a cool book! It's pretty exhaustive and touches on so many different cultures and time-periods. A definite must for non-fiction fans.

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