I have just finished reading Debt: The First 5000 Years by anthropologist David Graeber. The book takes a look at the history of money, debt, and how they relate to societal structures from a lens that departs heavily from the conventional wisdom of economic thinking. Conventional wisdom paints a picture of people inefficiently bartering goods and services directly for each other, and money naturally arising as a result of the problems inherent in this. Graeber eviscerates this narrative looking at anthropological history. Primitive communities simply shared their resources freely with…
Read More