Debt: The First 5,000 Years
by David Graeber
View on GoodreadsThe barter story sounds sensible, and economists have told it since Adam Smith. David Graeber's objection is that no evidence shows barter economies ever came first: credit and debt did, thousands of years before coins, and fights over who owes whom have shaped politics and your moral vocabulary of guilt, sin and redemption.
Core ideas
- Credit before coins: Agrarian empires ran complex credit systems for millennia before coinage, back to Sumerian debt around 3500 BCE, when rulers periodically cancelled debts.
- Debtors and creditors: Societies have long split between the two, and fights over debt and its forgiveness run through politics from ancient Italy to China.
- Disputed ground: Economists George Selgin and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel criticized factual errors and a polemical tone, while J.W. Mason defended the argument.
Published2011
Pages534
ISBN9781933633862
ReadJul 2023
