Money allowed us to see ourselves as a collection of individuals and nations whose main job is exchanging goods. Does it matter how it came about? That Graeber is concerned about it suggests that his perspective of human behaviour – self-serving acts meant to maximise one's own utility – is a historical universal, extending to pre-modern and non-western social contexts as well as the New Orleans cotton exchange. Today's economic system is based on money and credit. But debunking the founding myth tells us nothing about the system's functioning. But why is it important? It's like saying the state is legitimate because all people agreed to build it. But Graeber thinks it's all a lie - a fictional narrative that has never happened in actual pre-state cultures. This is a conventional classical and neoclassical economic theory. Graeber aims to dispel the widely accepted notion of money's truck-and-barter beginnings. He looks at what happens when a society has more debts than it can pay back (i.e., bankruptcy), how 'debt' is constructed socially and politically, why debt is necessary for economies to function properly, and much more. In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber explores how different societies have created and used their own forms of currency over time. In this blog post, we will explore the role of debt in society.
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