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Debt: The First 5,000 Years: Difference between revisions
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The best thing to do is just pick out some challenging points. | The best thing to do is just pick out some challenging points. | ||
===Everyday communism=== | ===Everyday communism=== | ||
Playfully, Graeber introduces the notion of “everyday communism” — I think he could have called it “communalism”, but that wouldn’t have upset the horses — as an alternative to an economic life of sterile, impersonal, quantifiable transactions. By this he did not mean Bolshevism, but something much more workaday: our general disposition help each other out without question where the relative personal cost is not great. This stance: to be a [[good egg]] — to co-operate and not defect — is deeper and more critical to interpersonal relationships than are the outcomes of economic transactions which, rather, ''depend'' on that basic layer of probity. “If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, ‘Hand me the wrench,’ his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, “And what do I get for it?’ ” | Playfully, Graeber introduces the notion of “everyday communism” — I think he could have called it “communalism”, but that wouldn’t have upset the horses — as an alternative to an economic life of sterile, impersonal, quantifiable transactions. By this he did not mean Bolshevism, but something much more workaday: our general disposition help each other out without question where the relative personal cost is not great. This stance: to be a [[good egg]] — to co-operate and not defect — is deeper and more critical to interpersonal relationships than are the outcomes of economic transactions which, rather, ''depend'' on that basic layer of probity. “If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, ‘Hand me the wrench,’ his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, “And what do I get for it?’ ” | ||
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The distinction between a [[debt]] — quantifiable obligation to pay a sum of money on a certain date; which in its [[fungibility]] and transferability is an impersonal thing — and a personal obligation in the wider sense (rather similar to the one yours truly draws between a [[liability]] and an [[obligation]]): A debt is a of money | The distinction between a [[debt]] — quantifiable obligation to pay a sum of money on a certain date; which in its [[fungibility]] and transferability is an impersonal thing — and a personal obligation in the wider sense (rather similar to the one yours truly draws between a [[liability]] and an [[obligation]]): A debt is a of money | ||
===Exchange and cancellation of debts=== | |||
An ongoing relationship implies a complicated web of reciprocal obligations (in the wider sense): these are not an imposition of a cost to the relationship, but its fuel: in a sense a relationship is a preparedness to grant, and accept, indulgences over time. That one is “obliged” is a ''good'' thing: literally, to be in a relationship is to be ''bound'' to one another. Thus, to exactly reconcile one’s outstanding obligation to another exactly — to leave nothing on the table — is to indicate that one wants the relationship to end: one wants the freedom to leave. | |||
{{quote|“Cancel student loan debt? But that would be unfair to all those people who struggled for years to pay back their student loans.” Let me assure the reader as someone who struggled for years to pay back his student loans and finally did so, this argument makes about as much sense as saying it would be unfair to a mugging victim not to mug their neighbours too.}} | {{quote|“Cancel student loan debt? But that would be unfair to all those people who struggled for years to pay back their student loans.” Let me assure the reader as someone who struggled for years to pay back his student loans and finally did so, this argument makes about as much sense as saying it would be unfair to a mugging victim not to mug their neighbours too.}} | ||
The question now is how to ratchet things down a bit: to configure society so that people can live a bit more by working less. | The question now is how to ratchet things down a bit: to configure society so that people can live a bit more by working less. | ||