During the Axial Age (800 BCE-600 CE), coins dominated (Chapter 9). We also see the earliest evidence of interest-bearing loans, which coincides with the first declarations by kings to forgive public debt. Agrarian Empires (3500-800 BCEE) in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China used virtual credit as their primary medium of exchange (Chapter 8). Graeber next turns to the cyclical nature of virtual credit money and coinage in Eurasia over the last 5,000 years. Using ethnographic accounts and textual evidence, he demonstrates how life was much different prior to the introduction of markets. Graeber wrestles with how violence has shaped our modern economy. Money, in human economies, rearranges these relationships. The key element to human economies is the fact that human beings “are each a unique nexus of relations with others-therefore, that no one could ever be considered equivalent to anything or anyone else” (208). Graeber then develops the concept of human economies in Chapter 6. One of the main reasons that Graeber takes issue with traditional economic theory is because it reduces all human activity to exchange. In Chapters 5-7, Graeber presents his model on what debt is and how it came to be. Traditional economists believe that barter was the primary mode of exchange before the invention of money and markets, and credit comes much later. The archaeological evidence suggests that traditional economists have the origin of money backwards.
0 kommentar(er)
