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I feel like Graeber's book is another (left leaning) fad to glom on to, like Piketty's book some years back. I found this book, The Price of Time by Edward Cha

I feel like Graeber's book is another (left leaning) fad to glom on to, like Piketty's book some years back. I found this book, The Price of Time by Edward Chancellor [1], very useful for understanding the development of money and debt over history. It's so detailed and clearly extensively researched. [1]: https://www.harvard.com/book/the_price_of_time/ https://www.harvard.com/book/the_price_of_time/

imtringued 2y ago
In a general equilibrium economy with no innovation or all innovation potential being exhausted, money demand and interest disappear. "Interest" isn't the price of time, it is the price of liquidity. For some reason economists seem to gloss over that money doesn't abstract over just time. It abstracts over everything including location, trade partner, the specific commodity being traded and minimum quantities. Since people involuntarily produce liquidity by bringing their goods to the market, people owning the rights to that liquidity (aka capitalists) can "reap where they haven't sown". This leads to a paradoxical situation. Liquidity production is work like any other. In short, liquidity production demands to be compensated. Since the holders of liquidity can utilize the benefits of the liquidity services without paying they can either decide to use the liquidity benefits themselves or they can decide to monetize them by selling liquidity on the capital markets. The compensation for this liquidity service is known as risk free interest. As I mentioned, liquidity demands to be compensated, but since the producer of liquidity does not get paid, they will eventually wisen up and cease producing liquidity in the national transaction network. This leads to production capacity in the economy being dismantled since it represents a commitment in time-commodity-quantity-person-space. Instead, future producers of liquidity await the holders of liquidity to effectively signal their demand so that they know to what production process they should commit to. Since information acquisition is costly, it is perceived to be cheaper to avoid committing oneself or in more direct terms: interest measures the reluctance to lose control over ones capital.
venv 2y ago
Piketty's book (Capital in the Twenty-First Century) is most definitely not a fad. It is a result of serious research into historical economic data and anyone intellectually honest ought take it seriously. As anything in the social science of economics, it is subject to debate, but to call it a 'fad' is odd, to put it mildly.
- NegativeK 2y ago
  I think it's popularity among layfolk, like myself, was a fad. I'd be incredibly surprised if it's flying off the shelves now like it was right after release. But popularity doesn't validate or invalidate its content.
- pas 2y ago
  serious? sure, yet wrong they made a few mistakes, and after correctiona their findings are not reproducible https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequality-auten-splinter-piketty-saez-zucman-tax-data https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequa... https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/the-piketty-saez-zucman-response-to-auten-and-splinter.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/th...
mempko 2y ago
It's strange that you would trust a fund manager like Edward Chancellor over a trained anthropologist like Graeber on historical research. The price of time looks a at a small sliver of debt through the eye of interest rates and their impacts. Chancellor's axe to grind is clear, that manipulation of interest rates by central governments has led to economic instability. Yet historically emperors, kings, and other rulers would periodically wipe the slate clear because debt enslaved too many people causing instability. Read Graeber's book. It's better researched.
- lurking15 2y ago
  > Chancellor's axe to grind is clear, that manipulation of interest rates by central governments has led to economic instability Have you read the book? Cause this is such a simplistic reduction of the book, I can't help to think that YOU have an axe to grind.
Nicholas_C 2y ago
Thanks for the rec. I’ve wanted to read “Debt” for a long time but I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him.
- Willish42 2y ago
  > I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him. Do you mind elaborating on why this is the case? I've read and liked some of his other work (Bullshit Jobs is a great one) and I have Dawn of Everything on my reading list -- was it due to his politics in general or because of disingenuous interpretations of the evidence?
  - Nicholas_C 2y ago
    Disingenuous interpretations of the evidence and stating things as facts that are very much still debated or denied by other experts. A good example: Graeber posits that the European Enlightenment came directly from contact with Native American ideals rather than being a home grown movement. To support this, Graeber repeatedly references a book written by a French Army officer named Lahontan about his travels in North America in the late 1600s[0]. In this book Lahontan has dialogue with a fictional Native American named Adario that is more or less a disguised critique of European society. Adario bears similarities to Iroquois Chief Kondiaronk[1]. It's thought that Adario was a literary device for Lahontan's ideas but Graeber makes a very hand wavy argument that Adario was actually Kondiaronk and the dialogue was real. Graeber then uses this as his main piece of evidence to support his theory about the origins of the European Enlightenment. I couldn't finish the book because I kept looking up the evidence Graeber was presenting and it usually ended up like the Kondiaronk situation. Graeber is also very condescending when he's writing about ideas held by other anthropologists (like Jared Diamond), it was off-putting and came off as unprofessional for someone who was supposed to be a leading academic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk

imtringued 2y ago

In a general equilibrium economy with no innovation or all innovation potential being exhausted, money demand and interest disappear. "Interest" isn't the price of time, it is the price of liquidity. For some reason economists seem to gloss over that money doesn't abstract over just time. It abstracts over everything including location, trade partner, the specific commodity being traded and minimum quantities. Since people involuntarily produce liquidity by bringing their goods to the market, people owning the rights to that liquidity (aka capitalists) can "reap where they haven't sown". This leads to a paradoxical situation. Liquidity production is work like any other. In short, liquidity production demands to be compensated. Since the holders of liquidity can utilize the benefits of the liquidity services without paying they can either decide to use the liquidity benefits themselves or they can decide to monetize them by selling liquidity on the capital markets. The compensation for this liquidity service is known as risk free interest. As I mentioned, liquidity demands to be compensated, but since the producer of liquidity does not get paid, they will eventually wisen up and cease producing liquidity in the national transaction network. This leads to production capacity in the economy being dismantled since it represents a commitment in time-commodity-quantity-person-space. Instead, future producers of liquidity await the holders of liquidity to effectively signal their demand so that they know to what production process they should commit to. Since information acquisition is costly, it is perceived to be cheaper to avoid committing oneself or in more direct terms: interest measures the reluctance to lose control over ones capital.

venv 2y ago

Piketty's book (Capital in the Twenty-First Century) is most definitely not a fad. It is a result of serious research into historical economic data and anyone intellectually honest ought take it seriously. As anything in the social science of economics, it is subject to debate, but to call it a 'fad' is odd, to put it mildly.

NegativeK 2y ago
I think it's popularity among layfolk, like myself, was a fad. I'd be incredibly surprised if it's flying off the shelves now like it was right after release. But popularity doesn't validate or invalidate its content.
pas 2y ago
serious? sure, yet wrong they made a few mistakes, and after correctiona their findings are not reproducible https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequality-auten-splinter-piketty-saez-zucman-tax-data https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequa... https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/the-piketty-saez-zucman-response-to-auten-and-splinter.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/th...

mempko 2y ago

It's strange that you would trust a fund manager like Edward Chancellor over a trained anthropologist like Graeber on historical research. The price of time looks a at a small sliver of debt through the eye of interest rates and their impacts. Chancellor's axe to grind is clear, that manipulation of interest rates by central governments has led to economic instability. Yet historically emperors, kings, and other rulers would periodically wipe the slate clear because debt enslaved too many people causing instability. Read Graeber's book. It's better researched.

lurking15 2y ago
> Chancellor's axe to grind is clear, that manipulation of interest rates by central governments has led to economic instability Have you read the book? Cause this is such a simplistic reduction of the book, I can't help to think that YOU have an axe to grind.

Nicholas_C 2y ago

Thanks for the rec. I’ve wanted to read “Debt” for a long time but I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him.

Willish42 2y ago
> I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him. Do you mind elaborating on why this is the case? I've read and liked some of his other work (Bullshit Jobs is a great one) and I have Dawn of Everything on my reading list -- was it due to his politics in general or because of disingenuous interpretations of the evidence?
- Nicholas_C 2y ago
  Disingenuous interpretations of the evidence and stating things as facts that are very much still debated or denied by other experts. A good example: Graeber posits that the European Enlightenment came directly from contact with Native American ideals rather than being a home grown movement. To support this, Graeber repeatedly references a book written by a French Army officer named Lahontan about his travels in North America in the late 1600s[0]. In this book Lahontan has dialogue with a fictional Native American named Adario that is more or less a disguised critique of European society. Adario bears similarities to Iroquois Chief Kondiaronk[1]. It's thought that Adario was a literary device for Lahontan's ideas but Graeber makes a very hand wavy argument that Adario was actually Kondiaronk and the dialogue was real. Graeber then uses this as his main piece of evidence to support his theory about the origins of the European Enlightenment. I couldn't finish the book because I kept looking up the evidence Graeber was presenting and it usually ended up like the Kondiaronk situation. Graeber is also very condescending when he's writing about ideas held by other anthropologists (like Jared Diamond), it was off-putting and came off as unprofessional for someone who was supposed to be a leading academic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk