Debt: The First 5,000 Years
- Book
- Jul 12, 2011
- #Economics
Book
Number of Pages: 534
ISBN: 1933633867
ISBN-13: 9781933633862
Recommended by
I read it and it’s awesome.
I’m fascinated by the way money can both bring stability and instability into our lives, so I wanted to read a philosophical book about money and its impact on community and culture. When I asked Twitter, this was the book the most people recommended to me. (I also liked Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, though I think the original essay is just as powerful.)
Asked by Dylan LeClair
Amazing book, I also like BS jobs and loved “the dawn of everything” by the same author, but “debt” was for me the best.
Asked by Dylan LeClair
The cycles of history, multi-century transitions between credit-based money and commodity-based money, packed to the brim with examples throughout the last 5000 years of record: this book has it all.
Asked by Dylan LeClair
Asked by Dan Held
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Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.
Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.
Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
(From Goodreads)