Debt: The First 5,000 Years

"Debt - the first 5000 years" by Prof. D. Graeber (unfortunately, he died some years ago at a young age)

A couple of books here. 1. Caesar by Adrian Goldsworthy. This is a biography of Julius Ceasar. There’s a story in here about a teenage Ceasar, with no institutional authority and effectively a student at this point, raising a navy to go capture pirates who had previously kidnapped him. I spent many years thinking about influence without any authority after reading this story and it’s probably had a significant shift in how I see the world and my role in it. 2. The WEIRDest people in the world by Joseph Henrich I grew up in India. This book helped me understand so much of the cultural differences between American culture and what I grew up with that it is easily one of the most valuable books for any immigrant or anyone from America who has to work across cultures. 3. Debt - The first 5,000 years by David Greber. The single most valuable thing I took away from this book came pretty early in the book - Buying stocks in a company is effectively loaning money to the company. This book shifted my perspective significantly- I use to see the world as a network of power relationships. Now I see the world as a network of debt relationships. I can not recommend it enough.

The purpose of the book is to make the general-audience reader realize the problems with the conceptual-historical framework of neoliberal economics and politics. David Graeber rightfully argues that Neoliberalism sells itself to the masses by constructing this "quaint" tale of uncivilized barter-practicing foraging tribes turning into coin/money using farmers into debt based industrial-financial empires. I am sure there are many factual inaccuracies in the book (I am not an expert so I wouldn't know either way). But what he successfully manages to do is show the reader that there are many many different economic systems practiced throughout history, and many of them very highly sophisticated (and not quaint as you suggest). And once the reader realizes this, there is only a short step to the question, "is neoliberalism really the best we can do or one of the other systems better for us?"

Debt: The First 5000 Years by great late David Graeber. It opened up my mind to a whole new reality which was hidden in plain sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_China) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_Illustrated#Volume_1:_T... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_Illustrated#Volume_1:_The_Protocols) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed

Debt: The first 5000 years And then I have not yet read it myself, although I have it on the shelf, but others recommended it for the exact same question as yours: Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

This website from Ray Dalio is excellent. https://economicprinciples.org/ Read Debt the first 5000 years from David Graeber. Read Money in the Modern Economy from the Bank of England. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bankofengland.co.uk... (https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-in-the-modern-economy-an-introduction&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjd46nn6ufoAhUHvJ4KHSo-BjMQFjAAegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw3dYvxxGs_C7rcXWYBjP3Cp) Why these? You have to understand money and credit. Economics ignores money and credit which would be like physics ignoring atoms and gravity.

Debt makes some particularly interesting observations about currency before fractional reserve banking, which I imagine most other books treat as a starting point. The hypothesized relationships between minting precious metals, war, slavery, and mining were thought-provoking.

Debt: The First 5000 Years https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf

For understanding how money works, I’d recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber.

"Debt: The first 5000 years" completely changed the way I view money, society, and relationships. "The selfish gene" changed the way I define life, opened my eyes to virtual life, and morality of selfishness vs. altruism. "Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life" changed the way I view the life and material existence. Whereas before I viewed them as two separate domains, after I see them as a spectrum. Chinese classic taoism treaties: "Dao De Jing", and "Zhuan Zi", offers a via-negativa way of thinking and view of existence, the values are beyond words.

Debt: the first 5000 years by David graeber.

Gödel, Escher, Bach awakened my intellectual curiosity about formal systems and other autistic modes of beauty as a teenager. After "The Selfish Gene" it was the first book I bought and read on my own volition, so I have to credit it as a major influence. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for showing that you can think rigorously and compose beautiful programs out of simple pieces. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty for showing that it's possible to think and feel about politics while maintaining a profoundly ironic and groundless mind. The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry for its beautiful view of civilization as materialized caring and of the inflicting of pain as metaphysically destructive. Being-in-the-world by Dreyfus for introducing me to Heidegger and showing how continental philosophy inspired by Heidegger was a major force in the evolution of AI and how AI researchers tended to be influenced by rationalist philosophy in the vein of Descartes which leads to huge misunderstandings of the nature of being.…

Debt, the first 5,000 Years (David Graeber) - Learned that most of history has been communist (eg. hunter gatherer societies), shops of the past were run on credit (eg. tally sticks), money/capitalism tended to emerge with the rise of the state, taxing to feed soldiers for war, and that the drive to pay off one's debt fueled a lot of the cruelty of mankind (eg. Hernan Cortez, Casimir). 21 Things they don't tell you about Capitalism, Bad Samaritans (Ha Joon Chang) - Learned that free trade is generally bad for developing countries, countries need to build out high productivity industries to grow their economy in the long term and avoid a balance of payments deficit (unless blessed with oil or something), manufacturing is vital to a country's economy and its service sector, "free markets" are a constantly evolving political definition with numerous inherent double standards, the only reason most of us in first world countries are paid well has nothing to do with our own superior ability (eg. bus driver in India vs. Norway), but due to immigration control and the institutions we inherit. Also looking for more book recommendations, so feel free to send some my way!

"Debt" by John Graber is a book of big ideas. Not always accurate in the details, and somewhat biased in its conclusions. Nonetheless it made me rethink the underpinnings of our financial system.

Going along with this sort of fundamentally changed worldview theme - I loved Debt: The First 5,000 Years but for me it was equally important to read a book called The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner. This book summarizes the entirety of major paradigms in the history of economic thought, complete with great little biosketches of the authors and their times, from Adam Smith to Joseph Schumpeter. Highly recommended, especially as a counterpoint if you are already a little much in the David Graeber camp as I was.

Fundamentally changed are so big words but these were pretty cool: - Douglas Hofstadter's GEB: An Eternal Golden Braid - Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber - Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest - Propaganda by Edward Bernays - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler - Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket (more of an exposé) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (ditto) - Neuromancer by William Gibson

I also came to recommend this: it's possibly the most interesting book I've ever read. (Maybe save TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 1: The Protocols) It cops a lot of flak from some conservative established economists though, probably because most of the book is dedicated to disassembling economic myth from the perspective of history and anthropology. Great case study of a fresh pair of eyes and an example of someone from one field applying different thinking to another field and coming to some very different conclusions. Can't recommend it enough.

"Debt: The First 5000 Years" David Graeber "Kokoro" Natsume Soseki "The Politics of Dialogical Imagination" Hirano Katsuya "History and Repetition" Karatani Kojin "The Structure of World History" Karatani Kojin "Anti-Oedipus" Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari "Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors" Nicholas Wade "Capital, Volume I" Karl Marx These books have been the most informative and thought-provoking for me this year.

I enjoyed "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber, an anthropoligical look at the history of money, morality and the nature of debt.