5,000 Years of Debt

Generali

Any interesting read IMO. The history of debt and money.

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-08-20-graeber-en.html

A tale of money and violence (although not much sex, disappointingly)

What follows is a fragment of a much larger project of research on debt and debt money in human history. The first and overwhelming conclusion of this project is that in studying economic history, we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call "the economy".

What's more, origins matter. The violence may be invisible, but it remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions that simply would never and could never exist outside of the monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of violence – maintained by the contemporary state.....[continues]

ninky_2

great article. i'd love to see an end to the nation state. it is both the creation of and the creator of many ills.

michaels

And with the machine intelligence singularity likely to occur within our life times you may get to see your wish.

ninky wrote: »

great article. i'd love to see an end to the nation state. it is both the creation of and the creator of many ills.

purch

(although not much sex, disappointingly)

At my age, tales of sex are usually enough :eek:

John_Pierpoint

Make sure that all the potential radicals at university graduate with a lifetime of being a debt slave?

Loughton_Monkey

Generali wrote: »

A tale of money and violence (although not much sex, disappointingly)

Marxist Theory:

"Labour is the source of wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labour belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

Crap theory. But actually, the first part about labour being the only source of wealth is probably true.

I find it very hard to argue with it. Cave men's 'wealth' only came from the labour of finding a vacant cave, hunting an animal, making clothes from the hide, and finding berries. Later, he emerged and laboured on building a shelter from wood, cultivating carrots, and farming sheep... The idle, who were sick and couldn't labour, would die, or rely on someone else's labour to obtain 'wealth' in the form of food, clothes, and shelter.

Wealth today includes gold and diamonds. But only because of the labour in mining them and manipulating them to purity.

Hence the article is probably spot on focussing on slavery and violence as the root of money and wealth, since (if I have nothing) I can only get wealthy myself either by labouring, or by using violence to force you to labour on my behalf and share the fruits of it 90% to me, and the other 10% to you just to keep you alive.

Over millions of years, wealth has accumulated, passed on through inheritance, commerce, or donation. This helps to explain why Britain is so 'wealthy' - accumulation from the past. It also helps to explain why we are losing our wealth. Because, as a nation, we do not truly 'labour' any more.

Labour is what plants seeds, picks diamonds and metal ores from the ground. It makes bricks and assembles them. Farms sheep and makes clothes....

We should not fool ourselves by equating 'Labour' with 'Work'. Yes, they overlap by a degree. But Britain has long since forgotten this. Invent a 'law' that says scaffolding must be independently inspected and recuit loads of inspectors to do this, and some authorities to check that they do. Here you have created 'work' but this is not 'labour'. It is passing some wealth from one person to another, but not creating it.

The more we create, the more there is to spread around by paying people to 'work' at things that are 'nice' [like laywers for example EDIT: should have said IFA's] in a civilised society. But let's not think they are creating wealth and it is not 'Labour' in the true sense of the word.

Thus, the sensible people invest their 'wealth' [whether accumulated by inheritance, 'work', or good fortune] in countries where there is a lot of 'Labour' going on. And where a much smaller proportion of wealth is 'wasted' on 'work' - or even worse 'non work'.

I find it a matter of extreme irony that the Political Party with that name, is the one that understands such fundamental principles the least of them all.

twiga_2

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night :-).

Loughton_Monkey

twiga wrote: »

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night :-).

Easy to solve. Read Hamish's posts.