I took out of it the idea the idea credit style human relationship money is foundational to him- and that totally anonymous money is correlated to violence and large scale slavery type societies where the individual is ripped from their social relations. I felt it was thin on the details on the soc...

"Read it" (audio) twice. Really like the anthropological perspective and for some reason the Narrator's (Grover Garland) voice kept me interested. Kinda reminds me of KITT from Knight Rider. This book triggered my thoughts about what money actually is. I searched for some indication of what Graebe...

It was the first big book read on what is money when it came out. It started the rabbit hole. Parts were slow and boring but it laid the foundation of questioning everything you thought you knew about money.

It’s on me reading list

It's on my reading list

Debt predates money and has been a fundamental feature of human societies for thousands of years. I appreciate his critiques of modern economic systems and the ways in which they contribute to inequality and social unrest.

Interesting book in that it helped me understand the reasoning behind the predominant modern narrative concerning money and the financial system. But I don’t know enough about the subject to have any thoughts on the actual merits of the arguments in the book.

I think his idea that debts/grievances/guilts are innate to human societies, that they pre-date money and markets, and in some important ways bind us all together, is a fascinating concept. That was the biggest takeaway for me. The perspective makes sense considering he's an anthropologist but I tho...

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It was also a favorite of Wences Casares when he was orange pilling Silicon Valley types in 2013-14.

That’s a seriously long amortization schedule.

My main takeaway was that the often described "natural" historical evolution path of barter, shells, gold, banking etc don't have any sufficient antropologic proof of being true. And if not true, why is that story so often told and who benifits from it being presented?

I read it and liked it. While it felt longer than it needed to be, it had a lot of great stuff and certainly made me think more interesting thoughts about the origins of money than, say, the Bitcoin Standard (which was borderline unreadable).

I loved that book along with all of graebers other work . the fact he died so early shows we are on a bad spot in the multiverse

Can't imagine writing a history of money and deliberately not mention bitcoin. I bet it has something to do with his background. However, busting the myth of barter at scale was valuable to me.

Haven’t read it…

I read it. What I liked: dismantling the Econ 101 myth of "in the beginning, there was barter everywhere". I think it fell short on many fronts. It could have gone deeper on the idea of the necessity of "measuring" as a precondition for trade, especially between people who don't have a lasting rela...

In small communities where people know each other, the exchange is based on credit. Money is a product of war and robbery. As the scale increases, an inversion occurs. In large communities where people do NOT know each other, the exchange is based on money. Credit is a robbery tool.

Read it some years ago, found it interesting as a counter argument to the usual first they bartered with shells myth/story. Seems logical that in tribal societies there would be debts first between members (cows, bride price, whatever) that would be on a handshake basis or adjudicated with the chief...

Based on memory these are my main takeaways: - Debunking with empiricall evidence the presumption held by most economists, that money evolved out of barter. Barter is for strangers and enemies. In communities/tribes credit/ledger-based systems was the norm. - The strong role debt played in the brut...

For those who find the book too long. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/b054zdp6

Sharing my, and others', response to Lyn's question #[0]

Readable, but selective account of monetary history with communitarian bias. This "historical" approach to money is always distorted by the fact that "quantitatively" for most of human history and cultures, monetary phenomena were linked to cult-based and tribal social relations, whereas "qualitativ...

Haven’t read it, working through Dalio’s ‘Principles for a New World Order’. There is a lot of discussion about the debt cycle in there. He also has a book on the debt cycle in detail, but obviously you would have read those. Curious how you see them compare to Graeber’s work, sounds like ...

Great read. But when I started researching it the core message appeared not to be true. Typically Graeber

I am 70% of the way through the book, since hearing you talk about on Preston’s podcast. At a high level, I like the book, the endless anecdotes are interesting. However, I find it hard to generalise them into a high level takeaway. Would graeber be a bitcoiner if he was still here?

My thoughts: The ledger preceded currency. Creditors have been enforcing debt repayment on the ledger with a wide range of tools ranging from guilt to imprisonment or worse. Those tools were tailored to an increasingly specialized debtor population. Specialized debtors we’re paid in currency. Curr...

Local money, of the people, for the people and by the people, ideally, is the future of money. It can be issued by the local government or by an Association or DAO. The local money may have features like UBI or oxidation. It may be exchanged with other local money, Bitcoin or Fiat with different...

Its been awhile since I read this but it seems to me you kinda got to treat it like quantum field theory. It has tremendous descriptive / predictive value so something is clearly correct but the math is impossible. Graeber's book is a bit like that and its the framework in which it is elaborated whi...

yep, I read it about 8 years ago. was similar to The Lost Science Of Money... i'd need to skim through it to remember... I will soon.

I’ve read summaries and I find the thesis ass-backward. I’d rather look at evidence of proto-economies in our primate cousins, like the monkeys in Bali that hold tourists’ stuff ransom for food: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/14/balis-thieving-monkeys-seek-bigger-ransoms-for-hi...

I thought it was interesting, though he seemed to heavily draw on the experiences of just a few anthropological niches. The connection of debt and slavery was the strongest part IMO

First I've heard of! Strikes me as deeply interesting ... #lifelonglearner

As with much of Prof. graeber's work it took very dry, polarized and over trodden subjects, back to their human fundamentals. His thoughts are not so much something to build a society on as to measure a society against. Especially in the light of Austrian fundamentals he reminds us that if the like...