If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Debt - like sin - implies that one party in the transaction didn't live up to expectations, at least in the moment,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it's their fault. — David Graeber Copy Share Image
If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
People don't have an ongoing relation unless it's a form of debt because everything is an exchange, so ongoing relationships are incomplete… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The fascinating thing about standard economic stories is exactly that: they assume that everybody wants that kind of closure. That all human… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do. — David Graeber Copy Share Image
A debt ... is just an exchange that has not been brought to completion. — David Graeber Copy Share Image
What is debt anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“Tally sticks were quite explicitly IOUs: both parties to a transaction would take a hazelwood twig, notch it to indicate the amount… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“Even in the Bible, the admonition in the Ten Commandments not to 'covet thy neighbor's wife' clearly referred not to lust in… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“In fact this is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England—the first successful modern central bank—was originally founded. In 1694,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
People don't have an ongoing relation unless it's a form of debt because everything is an exchange, so ongoing relationships are incomplete exchanges, and… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. Insofar as… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“But if Smith was right, and gold and silver became money through the natural workings of the market completely independently of governments, then wouldn't… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“money has no essence. It's not "really" anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.” — David Graeber Copy Share Image
We don't live in a capitalist totality. Capitalism couldn't survive as a totality anyway. We live in this complex system and we already live… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
The working poor are the people suffering out subprime mortgages and fatal loans and more and more of our money - you know, capitalism… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
“The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community,… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
If you imagine that everything is an exchange, then we're supposed to just transact and walk away. If we haven't walked away and we… — David Graeber Copy Share Image
