21 ms·
David Graeber has died
- rektide 6y agoWorld lost another real one. Such a real view of the bigger picture, such a student of humankind. Pour one out.
- rhizome31 6y agoYes, about one month after Bernard Stiegler passed away, this is a sad succession of losses.
- autosharp 6y agoFive days ago he was feeling "a little under the weather": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsrVKRhr1TA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsrVKRhr1TA Looking forward to that last book he just finished.
- kristopolous 6y agoIt's wild how fast death can come. He looks fine here. He apparently was still using Twitter on sept 2. It must have been sudden.
- techer 6y agoHow very sad. So much knowledge. Thanks for posting that.
- jb775 6y agoCan't wait for the last book. How awesome would it be if it's better than Debt: The First 5000 Years
- mcprwklzpq 6y agoI thought maybe he finished the book on origins of inequality with David Wengrow. But he said it is a book about kings. He published the book "On Kings" in 2017, it is in open access [1]. I assume he talked about another book about kings. David Graber wrote in his bio: «I am currently working with the archaeologist David Wengrow on a whole series of works completely re-imagining the whole question of “the origins of social inequality,” starting with the way the question is framed to begin with.» [7] With David Wengrow he published an article "Farewell to the ‘childhood of man’: ritual, seasonality, and the origins of inequality" in 2015. [2] They did a talk presenting the article. [3] They published an article "How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened)" in 2018. [4] And "Are we city dwellers or hunter-gatherers?" in 2019. [5] They talked about their work again in 2019. [6] I wonder if they planned to do more. It seemed as something of an even bigger scale than the Debt if turned into a book. But maybe it always was going to be a series of articles. 1 [pdf] - https://haubooks.org/on-kings/ https://haubooks.org/on-kings/ 2 [pdf] - http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62756/ http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62756/ 3 [video] - https://vimeo.com/145285143 https://vimeo.com/145285143 4 - https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/ https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/ 5 - https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5409/are-we-city-dwellers-or-hunter-gatherers https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5409/are-we-city-dweller... 6 [video] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvUzdJSK4x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvUzdJSK4x8 7 - https://davidgraeber.industries/contact https://davidgraeber.industries/contact Edit: It was going to be a book. In his 2018 cv Graber writes: «As Co-Author or Co-Editor in Preparation Beyond Inequality, or The Dawn of Everything, or maybe something else. Monograph currently in preparation with David Wengrow (Institute of Archaeology, University College London): a radical rethinking of existing narratives of the origin of social inequality from 40,000 CE to the present. As currently imagined, this is most likely to be the first volume of a subsequent trilogy that will easily outsell the Lord of the Rings.» [8] 8 [pdf] - https://davidgraeber.industries/s/DG-spring_summer-2017_18-CV-PUBLISH.pdf https://davidgraeber.industries/s/DG-spring_summer-2017_18-C...
- crotho 6y agoHe was talking about the children's book version "What are Kings?" by Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32177115 https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32177115
- mxwsn 6y agoA tremendous loss. I would highly recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years to anyone here.
- rhizome31 6y agoYes, to give a bit more info, this is an anthropology book. You will learn about incredible customs from various societies around the world and history. It also often touches on feminism because the main topic of the book (debt) and the situation of women are often tightly linked.
- pinewurst 6y agoBut not a boring one if people are afraid of that. I really enjoyed the mixture of history and anthropology in Debt.
- zingplex 6y agoI think you're underselling it. The book is without question the most interesting I've read in the past twelve months. It took me several months to read, not because it was dull but because the ideas it presented every few pages were so thought provoking that a great deal of pondering was required to understand their implications.
- marmaduke 6y ago> without question the most interesting I've read in the past twelve month I think for me, the past decade.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- loceng 6y agoThere's an "Updated and Expanded" version as well.
- jb775 6y ago
- sbuccini 6y agodang pointed out that Graeber has posted some pretty interesting comments on this site[0], which unfortunately I cannot find right now. I had heard of, but not read, Bullshit Jobs so his HN comments was my first exposure to him. Honestly, I just remember being impressed by his willingness to engage. I'm sure it was painful and exhausting for him, especially his repeated skirmishes with DeLong, but so many authors shy away from challenges to their work so it was refreshing to see someone come into the proletarian trenches that are HN comments and do battle. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17904616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17904616
- huac 6y agohis username was davidgraeber. I really enjoyed reading Debt and it is really a unique and useful perspective. RIP, he will truly be missed.
- nickff 6y agoDirect link for the curious: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidgraeber https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidgraeber
- MrsPeaches 6y agoWow, this exchange between him and Brad DeLong is utterly bizzare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mindcrime 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17162935 is one of the instances where he posted here.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThat’s a real shame. “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” really affected my world view, we lost him too soon.
- rsync 6y agoI enjoyed immensely _Debt_ ... has anyone read both and can compare and contrast the quality and depth of the two ? I don't have a lot of room in my reading list, currently, but if _Bullshit Jobs_ is comparable in quality, I could move it into the queue ...
- Aeolos 6y agoBullshit jobs is a bit more light-hearted and not as deeply researched as Debt. It is based mainly on observations from hundred of replies to his original article on bullshit jobs. I found both books insightful and enjoyable to read and would highly recommend them to anyone.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI don’t think I finished reading Debt; it was both less light hearted as you said, and I don’t think I had anywhere near the economical, historical, or anthropological background to understand completely.
- erikig 6y agoThe humor of the request by a /u/rsync for a comparison of two books was not lost on me (or as the cool kids on reddit say "Username checks out")
- lmohseni 6y agoI would say _Debt_ debt is pretty grand and sweeping, whereas _Bullshit Jobs_ is a much quicker read. However, some of his insights into the "spiritual violence" of a bull shit job really, deeply, changed the way i spend my time, and as good as _Debt_ is, if I could only choose to have read one, I would choose _Bullshit Jobs_.
- marricks 6y agoThis article of his I found particularly profound: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-hav... > Why do animals play? Well, why shouldn’t they? The real question is: Why does the existence of action carried out for the sheer pleasure of acting, the exertion of powers for the sheer pleasure of exerting them, strike us as mysterious? What does it tell us about ourselves that we instinctively assume that it is? For anyone who was influenced by Dawkins in high school it's a breath of fresh air, our world doesn't have to be bound to dogmatic religion or even dogmatic selfishness.
- bonoboTP 6y agoI suggest re-reading The Selfish Gene and not getting caught up too much at the title, but actually paying attention to the content (as a high schooler it may not be easy to grok, especially if your school taught evolution wrong, even teachers often don't understand it). Dawkins never says people are always selfish by necessity. He says genes (not individual organisms) propagate as if they were selfish, but this is just a metaphor, if the metaphor disturbs you you can ignore it, the actual content of the evolutionary reasoning does not require using words like selfish. Also, that quote on playing just dodges the question. Why is what we call "play" so pleasurable to animals? "Because they enjoy it" is not an answer. Why don't animals do other things for pleasure? And there are very good evolutionary arguments, but that's not the point now.
- naravara 6y agoHe covers all that in the article.
- joycian 6y agoI never got that feeling from Dawkins? Could you explain?
- marricks 6y agoPassage below is where he really mentions Dawkins: > The epitome of this line of thought came with militant atheist Richard Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene—a work that insisted all biological entities were best conceived of as “lumbering robots,” programmed by genetic codes that, for some reason no one could quite explain, acted like “successful Chicago gangsters,” ruthlessly expanding their territory in an endless desire to propagate themselves. Such descriptions were typically qualified by remarks like, “Of course, this is just a metaphor, genes don’t really want or do anything.” But in reality, the neo-Darwinists were practically driven to their conclusions by their initial assumption: that science demands a rational explanation, that this means attributing rational motives to all behavior, and that a truly rational motivation can only be one that, if observed in humans, would normally be described as selfishness or greed. As a result, the neo-Darwinists went even further than the Victorian variety. If old-school Social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer viewed nature as a marketplace, albeit an unusually cutthroat one, the new version was outright capitalist. The neo-Darwinists assumed not just a struggle for survival, but a universe of rational calculation driven by an apparently irrational imperative to unlimited growth. It goes on to discuss an alternative to the neo-Darwinist view and brings back to the core thesis of the piece, play. I'd really just massacre the thesis if I summarized it so if you find that interesting or disagree I'd really read his piece I linked above!
- samizdis 6y agoThis is a real blow. I've been reading his stuff for years. Here's a link [1] to his stuff in The Baffler from 2012 to 2016, but there's much more available - I've .pdfs of his writings that I saved from many sources. I'll update this later if I can find the original, live links. [1} https://thebaffler.com/authors/david-graeber https://thebaffler.com/authors/david-graeber Edited to add: Actually, Wikipedia has a pretty good linked list of his articles, and a quick title check with mine seems to suggest that it is comprehensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber#Articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber#Articles Further edited to add: A short (180-page) book by Graeber, The Utopia of Rules, is a lovely example of his thoughtful writing style. It's nicely summed up in Wikipedia [1]. It is available to buy from many good book stores, and it is also at Amazon. However, you can download it as a .pdf here [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules [2] https://b-ok.cc/dl/2643480/a4be9e https://b-ok.cc/dl/2643480/a4be9e @dang - please delete this comment if it breaks any HN rules.
- fallingfrog 6y agoA terrible tragedy, he died so young, with so many books left unwritten.
- k1m 6y agoAs this is published in the Guardian, it's fair to point out that David Graeber was very much outspoken against the Guardian in the last couple of years and refused to write for them again. > as for the Guardian, we will never forget that during the "Labour #antisemitism controversy", they beat even the Daily Mail to include the largest percentage of false statements, pretty much every one, mysteriously, an accidental error to Labour's disadvantage - https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1210322505229094912 https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1210322505229094912 > these venues only allow people like me on to legitimate themselves; i.e., the Guardian would systematically refuse to allow me to say anything about the Corbyn antisemitism charges, but simultaneously beg me to write about trivial matters like Black Friday. I finally was forced to face up to the reality: they wanted the name of prominent intellectual lefties associated with them so their systematic attacks on the political left would be taken more seriously. We were being used. - https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1256291019542401024 https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1256291019542401024 > oh I'm definitely not writing for the Guardian again - https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1214619782991040512 https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1214619782991040512
- dang 6y agoAnd what a classic "journalistic" cheap shot they're taking at him with that photo (https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9e901f036a105724595e106ace3d67e5bf65e525/0_1233_3123_1873/master/3123.jpg?width=605&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=3c819c1017308ddbadfb349c488fd927 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9e901f036a105724595e106ace3d6...). I was going to ask if anyone could suggest a better article, but the text itself is quite good. No doubt the photo was chosen by someone other than the author. A pity to lose him. Graeber was unusually fresh, with a talent for provoking interesting discussion, whether one agreed or not. He also got into flamewars on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidgraeber https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davidgraeber.
- pmiller2 6y agoOn the contrary, I thought that photo showed him with a quizzical, skeptical look, which is something I would bet he'd appreciate were he here to do so. Any chance we can get a black bar for him? His ideas were so interesting that I think it would be appropriate, even though he wasn't involved in the history of computing per se.
- jimnotgym 6y agoI came across him in a radio series he did about the debt book. 20 minutes later I was questioning everything I learned as an accountant about money and debt. Everything he said was calm and reasoned. I was awestruck. RIP. Far too young
- KKKKkkkk1 6y agoI didn't like the "We are the 99%." slogan. Traditionally in the US, protest movements have been asserting their right to correct an injustice. In this case, it was more of an assertion of power and a threat to impose the majority's will on the minority. That was in breaking with the culture of liberal democracy, which the anarchist authors of that slogan were not big fans of.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoLmao but it’s okay for the 1% to impose their unjustified authority on everyone else? (Also your criticism that the slogan is merely just changing the balance of power is founded in an ignorance of anarchism. Anarchism does not aim to redistribute power, it aims to eliminate it. As long as power exists, it will be abused.)
- KKKKkkkk1 6y agoI don't understand. Are you disputing my statement that anarchists are not fans of liberal democracy?
- ashtonkem 6y agoAnarchists as a general rule aren’t a big fan of grabbing power for anyone, 99% or 1%.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoNo, you are misunderstanding the slogan. The slogan is saying that there is a rich 1% that holds the majority of decision making power in today’s world. It is up to the rest of the 99% to unite and recognize this tyranny, and to then wrestle away that power. There is no mention of the 99% abusing that power instead, and given that DG was an anarchist, He presumably instead meant that that power should be destroyed.
- incompatible 6y ago100% sharing power would be the anarchist ideal. But promoting a member of the currently powerless 99% to a powerful position wouldn't help at all.
- erikig 6y agoWhat a loss, I just finished reading Debt this week and even though I don't completely agree with his conclusions I enjoyed the way he came to them. He also had one of the best laughs I've heard. He will be missed.
- tosser0001 6y agoThis was the first thing I had ever read by him about the time of the Yale controversy. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004): http://abahlali.org/files/Graeber.pdf http://abahlali.org/files/Graeber.pdf It struck me as some really original thinking
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoI had no idea how common slavery was used by patriarchs to settle debts until I read "Debt: The First 5000 Years". Graeber's death is tragic.
- thundergolfer 6y agoThat stuff went off like a depth-charge in my brain. The idea that it would only become possible for humans to be treated as property once they were wrenched from their community and severed from their social context is profound. Amazing, amazing book.
- cbHXBY1D 6y agoHorrible. His writing affected me in so many ways and was a gateway to leftist theory/thought.
- DINKDINK 6y agoGraeber's writing offers many thought provoking left anarchist perspective that's sorely missing in public debate. I thoroughly enjoyed "Debt"'s perspective on social-economic collaboration, money, credit, debt, and contract arbitration. It's a very informative and thought provoking book. "Bullshit" grossly misses some fundamental aspects about modern markets and power structures and as a result turns into an insipid, meandering grievance without substance. The commentary mistakes social-welfare states which have monopoly enforcement on: credit repayment (legal tender), and authoritarian control of the means of production (permitting) as capitalism (_private_ ownership and deployment of goods and services). As a result, the entire subsequent criticism that follows in the book is misguided. If I had to summarize it: "Economic (consumer's-goods) producers are supremely inefficient in the deployment of labor, resources, time, production quantity which results in a social malaise". It implicitly pathologizes the choices of people who work in the "bullshit" jobs as unable to make nuanced, multivariable decisions. Yes, it may be the case a security camera would be a more efficient observer to an empty lot than paying a human, bored out of their mind, to sit in a hut. But that critique denies the economic calculus the hut worker made, that this job was the most ideal option out of the many different dimensions available to them. If the set of available options cannot be combined to produce desired results, it's not possible to combine inputs among a further reduced set of options to produce the desired results ("regulation"). The only option is to increase the set of available options (liberalization, de-monopolization), to produce different outcomes. The entire book fails to address to roll of entrepreneurship, e.g. a speculative endeavor by an individual or group that they can deploy labor, resources, time, production quantity in a more ideal and enjoyable arrangement. The absence is a shame because instead of the book being a diatribe, it could have been a powerful call to action to improve our lot.
- hnzix 6y agoHow does one achieve de-monopolization without regulation?
- Mizza 6y agoDevastating news. I just spoke about his work (and what to do about it) during my recent keynote at PyConJP, I was just about to send him the video of it, now I can't. A horrible feeling. I met David after a reading one time, a very kind and intelligent man. (Weirdly enough, Peter Theil was also there. He is a lizard creature). If he was an asshole at times, he was an asshole in the good kind of way. The world lost a gem today.
- pizza 6y agoWould you be ok with sharing your memory of him more? It sounds like a treasured moment.
- kiliantics 6y agoThere is a debate between the two of them on youtube that's pretty interesting
- tome 6y ago> Weirdly enough, Peter Theil was also there. He is a lizard creature. That sounds strange. What do you mean?
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoI’m not the OP, but pretty sure the implication is that Peter thiel is a terrible person
- tacheiordache 6y agoI think OP refers to Thiel’s psychopatic traits. Peter is calculated and bright in that way but he doesn’t show any empathy. Maybe for money and power
- lucasnortj 6y agoBullshit jobs was a tremendously tedious book but then that is to be expected from someone who is an anarchist; an ideology that competes with Marxism in its idiocy
- eruleman 6y ago"What is a debt, anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence..." - David Graeber
- input_sh 6y agoReally saddened to hear this. I've only recently started digging into his work and I can only imagine how it'll impact my worldview for years to come. For those unfamiliar with his work, here are some essays I recommend as a start: 1. On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/ 2. What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun? https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-hav.. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-hav.... 3. How to change the course of human history (at least, the part that’s already happened) https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/ https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
- marmaduke 6y agobuy and read Debt: the first 5000 years. It is an eye opening perspective on world history. His Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology is also one I always wished to read a follow up on.
- programmarchy 6y agoGreat book. It was the exit ramp from the libertarian history of money for me.
- noneeeed 6y agoI should probably give that another go when I have more time. I got part way in and just stopped after a while as it just seemed to be taking forever to get anywhere. It's a bit like Better Angels of Our Nature, which I got about 1/3rd of the way through before getting bored of the same point being demonstrated over and over. There's something to be said for making serious time for reading serious books, rather than reading them piecemeal over too long a time as I did back then.
- lmohseni 6y agoIn my opionion, it seemed to really "pick up" around chapter 6, "games with sex and death" when it really started to get into anthropological nuts and bolts.
- uvesten 6y agoWhat an odd coincidence, I just started reading ”Bullshit Jobs” today :/
- ideals 6y ago"Bullshit Jobs" had a profound change on my outlook in the tech industry. Perhaps it was because I was on the heels of leaving Amazon at the time I read it, but it changed my mindset on what I should be working towards in life. Sad day
- totablebanjo 6y agoWhat are you working towards now? How did your outlook change?
- mars4rp 6y agoYes, Bullshit jobs and "fooled by Randomness" is a must read for anyone that wants to work in tech sainly
- djsumdog 6y ago"Debt: The First 5,000 Years" is still my favorite non-fiction book. It shows readers a really unique perspective on the history of debt, money and slavery. Graeber was an incredible author. May he rest in peace.
- jseliger 6y agoHe is interesting but also wrong a lot: https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-fools-day-post.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/04/david-graeber-april-f... If you'd like an antidote to his book Debt, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible is useful. Debt may be called "5,000 years of anecdotes:" https://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/debt-the-first-500-pages https://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/debt-the-first-500-pages. This: https://quillette.com/2019/09/09/the-anarchist-and-the-anthropology-journal/ https://quillette.com/2019/09/09/the-anarchist-and-the-anthr... also doesn't cover him with glory. He did think differently and often intelligently, which is to be admired, but "Different and also correct" is different from simply "different."
- blueline 6y agofor anyone interested in some history between the author of the first link and graeber, in his own words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707
- samizdis 6y agoThat was an informative read. Many thanks.
- yarrel 6y ago> I think the biggest actual mistake DeLong managed to detect in the 544-odd pages of Debt, despite years of obsessively flailing away, was (iirc) that I got the number of Presidential appointees on the Federal Open Market Committee board wrong. I thought it was one, actually it's three. Yup. Guilty as charged. Yes it's an illuminating read. :-)
- samizdis 6y agoI don't know how your comment, although interesting and with worthwhile links (thanks, by the way), relates to mine. I'd not mentioned his "thinking differently", and neither did I suggest that he was "different and also correct". (Nor did I mention his work "Debt".) I liked his writing; for its style and because it made me think. I like that. It doesn't imply total agreement or fanaticism, and neither does it imply hostility or disagreement. I would offer, from your first link, part of a comment lifted from its comment thread (even if I might dispute the commenter's use of the word "tiny"): ... We can all pick over tiny details in books and engage in hermeneutic readings…. It’s not hard.…. [W]hat’s going to be remembered, David’s book with its intellectually revolutionary message, one that has inspired so many young economists that I meet or DeLong’s pedantic complaints about ambiguous meanings and contentious issues.… Who wins in the contest for etiquette? I don’t know. But who wins the intellectual argument? Again, let history decide. But I’m thinking Graeber.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoGraeber was a talented polemicist who had a loose relationship with the truth. For example, in the first edition of his book, Debt, he wrote Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages... He gave conflicting explanations (https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/the-very-last-david-graeber-post.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/the-very-last-david-g...) for that quote, but at the very least it shows how uncareful he was as a scholar.
- consz 6y agoI would refer to this -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164707 for a response to your point directly from Graeber himself. I don't think there's any reason to listen to Delong's criticisms, he's intellectually dishonest and a stalker to boot.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoBrad DeLong is a distinguished economic historian who has a long-running blog where he tends to the ascerbic. He's not gunning for Graeber. Graeber is just one of many topics he has addressed over the years. Graeber can't really defend his Apple quote, so he resorts to this kind of personal attack. DeLong being wrong about Sumer does not make Graeber right about Apple. He had very little tolerance for disagreement. The blog Crooked Timber had a roundtable to discuss Debt. The discussion was mostly positive, but with some criticisms around the edges. Graeber had a vituperative response that took everyone by surprise. You can see the conclusion of the discussion with a perplexed response here: https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/04/because-imperialism/ https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/04/because-imperialism/
- yarrel 6y agoGraeber didn't defend the Apple statement, he said it was an editing error and that it was revised for later editions. Obsessing over that wasn't a good look for DeLong. It isn't for his alts, his stans, or whatever you are. That Crooked Timbre post is not very good. It reflects much worse on the author than on its purported subject.
- guerrilla 6y agoI talked to David quite a few times online and always noticed how he somehow managed to remain a real person if you know what I mean. A lot of people just can't do that even starting at the smallest bit of fame, yet he did even when being mobbed. Can't believe he's gone now. Really sad.
- missedthecue 6y agoSurprised how many people here loved his books. I only read debt and BS jobs, but found them to be shallow and poorly thought through, reading almost like the ramblings of a stoned undergraduate philosophy student. Moreover, I noticed that they were particularly full of motivated reasoning.
- banmeagaindan2 6y agoPity, a worthy opposition for sparring. I wish the debate with Peter Thiel had worked out better - I think they were hamstrung by the format and something like the Uncommon Knowledge conversational style would have bought the best out.
- crotho 6y agoI remember that debate. Peter Thiel looked like he'd slathered himself in the rendered fat of all the children he's probably killed for one of his life extension gene editing startups.
- heydenberk 6y agoI had some interesting interactions with him (and former deput asst secretary of treasury DeLong) on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163449 He certainly got the better of that interaction and he was patient enough to continue the conversation on Twitter later. He was one of those intellectuals (like Noam Chomsky) who is accessible and engaging with members of the public. I wouldn't say I knew him, exactly, but we became internet acquaintances, and I appreciated his thoughtfulness whenever we interacted. I can only imagine how many other people had such opportunities to talk to him and will miss him like I will.
- fergie 6y agoWow- what an odd exchange. So eye opening to see senior academics from repected institutions carrying on like that.
- mleonhard 6y agoPeople in all parts of society get health problems, including mental health problems. I hope the person can recover soon.
- QuesnayJr 6y agoI've already been accused of being a DeLong alt elsewhere on this site, but I genuinely don't understand how Graeber came across better than DeLong in that exchange. DeLong tweeted out a bunch of one-line criticisms of Graeber. Graeber's response is to call DeLong names, and talk about all of the totally famous academics he knows and how they all agree with him. The final chapter of Debt received lots of criticism from lots of people, and Graeber's response was anything but professional. You can see it in the response you link to, right there, where he intimates that DeLong has mental illness. I mean, just look at DeLong's blog. He posts completely normal center-left every couple of days. He's probably an asshole in arguments (he once claimed that a comment by Ed Prescott "failed to pass the Turing test"), but he's like an ordinary dude engaging in ordinary behavior.
- einpoklum 6y agoMay he live long in our memory. An inspirational and profound writer - of whose work I have only tasted little so far, but enough to be very impressed.
- jahaja 6y agoSo damn sad. Such an inspiration as a fellow anarchist (in the sense he meant by it). Rest in peace my friend.
- stackzero 6y agoRIP. His book "Debt: The first 5000 years" really impacted my thinking about how our economy works and how I might help it in the future.
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoRIP. I had a luck to meet him in person and have a chat. Work in area of economy, future of job ... I would recommend "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
- thazework 6y agoA good talk by him about his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs (avoid if OCD..)
- atdrummond 6y agoDavid saved my academic career, if not my life. When I faced expulsion from the LSE, having already left the University of Chicago due to the health issues, he wrote a compelling letter on my behalf when there was no reason for him to do so. I wasn’t even in his department. Although he and I disagreed about a number of things, I will forever appreciate him sticking his neck out for me when there was little evidence to suggest it was worth doing. Thanks David.
- just_testing 6y agoGlad you shared this anecdote. I've only had contact with him online and it's good to see he was such a great person IRL.
- ricksunny 6y agoI also really enjoyed Debt: The first 5k years. The critiques outlined here are interesting and I would like to understand them better. Whatever validity those critiques might have, I feel ‘Debt’ adds much more to our understanding of debt in historical economies than it obfuscates even if the critiques were valid.
- fskg 6y agoHe tweeted this out recently: > https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1277208664873603075 https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1277208664873603075 > this is why I like the phrase "white supremacy". White people have disproportionate power. Obviously this is unfair. So there's a problem. Ok. How do we fix the problem? His wiki entry: > Graeber's parents, who were in their forties when Graeber was born, were self-taught working-class intellectuals in New York.[7] His parents are Jewish.[8] Graeber's mother, Ruth Rubinstein Jews also control disproportionate wealth, and wield disproportionate power. Yet I doubt Graeber would have agreed that this is also obviously unfair, that it is a problem, and that it ought to be fixed.