How bad boy
Full Member
I've had a look at the ideas, not actually bought the book. Comes across as quite Marxist, not an inherently bad thing as Marx had some solid ideas. The idea of debt being effectively future labour obligations is very much marxist and if you think about billionaires that way, it reveals how nuts it is that we let people get that rich.
I think the point on debt as the oldest means of trade is and that cash and barter were later developments is...not looking at it quite the right way. Cash and barter are the currency of transaction, debt is not a currency of transaction, it's a record of accounts. Debt is whether or not you've met your obligation (imposed va tribute/rent, trade or labour), barter might be how you achieve that, as might coinage. They're two quite separate things.
I think of market systems as a mechanism of exchange, it's one of many possible, sometimes it's the best way of doing things, quite often it's not, but fundamentally it's an efficient and effective tool for allocating resources, to a point. You ignore it at your peril, history shows that societies who don't use them properly regularly end up in extreme situations like famine due to severe resource misallocation.
That's not to say western society is allocating resources amazingly, the US is currently demonstrating how badly it can be done, but going back to social obligation has a pretty bad history too.
