![]() Smith argued that people bartered one thing for another for the sake of mutual convenience. The first is imagining society following the father of modern economics Adam Smith’s barter theory (Chapter 2). He demonstrates that we are trapped between two different ideas. To understand how we got to this point, Graeber discusses the origins of money according to traditional economic theory. Humans also tend to view all moneylenders as evil, even though we take on both roles as lender and borrower in our relations with others. At face value, repaying debt seems to be an economic concern, but we often categorize it in the realm of morality. In fact, Graeber suggests in Chapter 1 that we have profound moral confusion when it comes to the concept of debt. The first four chapters of Debt describe a dilemma: We do not really know how to think about debt. He hopes the diverse political, economic, and social arrangements described in Debt will spark new ideas for how we view debt, work, money, and freedom. To him, it feels like technological advances and sociopolitical complexity have caused people to believe that there are no other alternatives to our current financial order. Graeber focuses on the last 5,000 years in part because he believes there has been a collapse in our collective imaginations. ![]()
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