Technology

Greed is a problem. Debt is a problem. Money... is a tool. One that enables them, but one that is also somewhat useful. As long as it's not an end in and of itself (which is, incidentally, exactly what capitalism is about, and exactly what cryptocurrencies are about, and that is exactly why I said cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist).

Graeber's analysis is fascinating. In small communities (say, a village) until, say ~18th century, money was simply not needed for day-to-day stuff. In fact, it was notoriously difficult to get coins in large enough quantity to go about regular daily business (buying food, selling your wares, etc).

So people did what they always do in small, closely-knit communities: operated on credit. And in many of those communities every now and then (maybe once per year or six months, depending on the community) there was a reckoning, where people's credit was cleared against each other, and what was left to pay was paid in coin.

Actual money was used when a given transaction was happening with someone who was not from that community — a traveler, for example — as it was impossible to expect them to come to the reckoning or otherwise be around long enough to "balance the books" so to speak.

It's all sorts of more nuanced, of course, and Graeber goes into all that nuance. Really good read, and very much on-topic.

Anyway, can't wait for our friend to pontificate on how all of this is wrong and never happened and how Graeber — having done decades of scientific research both as an anthropologist and as an economist — has no clue what he's talking about. 🙂