Debt, The First 5000 Years

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Program Type: Speech

Featured Speakers/Commentators: Read by Robin Upton

Broadcast Restrictions: For non-profit use only.

Broadcast Advisory: No Advisories - program content screened and verified.

Summary: Anthropologist David Graeber takes a long view of debt, observing 5000 year of historical cycles, as interest bearing debt slowly reduces a large fraction of the populace to slavery, at which point the rich forgive the debts (jubilee) and/or an uprising destroys the social order by force. Graeber challenges a lot of sacred cows of economists, such as the idea that money evolved from barter or that markets somehow spontaneously arise independent of states.



Highly recommended reading for anyone involved in creating new money systems or organising movements of debt resistance.

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