The excellent anthropologist David Graeber has an interview on Naked Capitalism discussing his new book, Debt: The First 5000 Years. Graeber is a lucid writer and his interview explores the origins of money as a measure of debt. It’s well worth a read.
Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.
Check out the book on Amazon – £16 + postage for 544 pages of condensed smartness.
