Yes, he discusses the Platonic aspects of his theory in a paper, “Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments”:
Yes! Until I saw the box cover illustration, I had totally forgotten that a high-school friend of mine and I worked months to build a Gauntlet clone on our 64K Apple ][+ machines due to the money it was costing us to play it at local game store/nerd magnet, "Dragon's Lair".
Regarding Newsom, US states are far more constrained in their spending bc they cannot create money, and must account for their expenditures more like a household or corporation. Social benefit programs, entitlements, etc. must therefore by managed and paid for at the Federal level, just like all of the goods and services that we, as a society, deem it necessary to produce regardless of whether it makes a profit or not - like most of the core transportation infrastructure, the global military empire, fundamental science, engineering, medical research and services, etc.
Taxes provide the fundamental value of money: taxes must be paid in the state’s currency, making that currency inherently valuable to avoid punishment. They also provide a way to prevent the existence of individuals powerful enough to corrupt the regulatory state, as has occurred in many of the most powerful neoliberal jurisdictions.
Yes, inflation is a constraint, and a powerful one - but avoiding inflation by treating a sovereign currency system like a household or corporation that do not have powers of money creation or taxation, and therefore must balance their budgets, is absurdity. The strongest constraint on state spending is an economy’s production capacity, not an arbitrary budget.
Federal spending is not funded by taxes, the US Treasury will never 'dry up', and the US will never default on its debts or entitlements. It may fail to pay, however that is not a default, it is a refusal or repudiation of an obligation.
“Enshittification” updates for the modern era the concept of enclosure, where a common resource that was formerly open and free to contributors is progressively controlled, restricted, or diminished to increase private profits.
Homelessness serves as excellent motivation for us to sacrifice our bodies and minds on the behalf of our employers’ profit. Poverty isn’t an unfortunate side effect of resource mis-allocation at the margins of society, but a necessary feature of the institutional mechanisms that burn out generations, keeping the bread and circuses going.
Corporations can fund research in ways that allow them to suppress results that threaten their profits. If science is conducted in these ways, corporations can fund science (for which they receive tax benefits) and if the results are positive, it gets published and the corporation wins because the research supports their business model (tails, I win). If the research results does not support their business model, they can decline to publish it (tails, you lose).
There are ways to do science that avoid this kind of corruption.
If you read the critiques that Graeber discusses, you’ll see they’re exactly as he describes: instead of addressing Graeber’s arguments, they instead insinuate that his ideas are not worth addressing (after using the silly Apple error to dismiss Graeber’s entire body of work).
Notably, he does respond to their actual points, at length and to such an extent that copying and pasting an example which includes both Farrel’s critique and Graeber’s response would dwarf my words in this reply. are we even reading the same article?
HN readers would be aware of the long running debate because he mentions the debate, summarizes several elements of it, points readers to where it can be found, IN THE VERY HN POST FROM WHICH I QUOTED!!
Perhaps Graeber believed that HN readers were capable of using search engines to familiarize themselves with the debate, and verify his claims. Apparently, not all HN users are capable of this, as demonstrated by your posts throughout this discussion.
And, we have further evidence of either your incuriosity or obfuscation. No, Graeber did not accuse DeLong of war crimes in that tweet because of DeLong’s mere support of neoliberal economics. If you’d read further that Twitter thread, Graeber provides context, mentioning the ELZN and NAFTA.
Plug those into your favorite search engine, and you’ll get references to the Zapatista’s revolt against NAFTA, and their reasons for their actions. From The Nation[1]:
“We are a product of 500 years of struggle,” began the Declaration of War read out from the city-hall balcony to the people gathered in the main square, or Zócalo. Then came the phrase that would become iconic the world over: “But today we say ¡Ya Basta! (Enough is Enough!).” Named after the equally iconic revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, the Zapatistas planned the rebellion to coincide with the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Their prediction, which history has subsequently borne out, was that NAFTA would hasten the dispossession of indigenous people both by opening up the region to large-scale ranching and by driving down the prices small farmers received for their corn, beans, and coffee. Today, Mexico imports nearly half of the corn and beans it consumes, and is equally dependent on staple products such as American-produced pork, chicken, wheat, and powdered milk.
Researcher and activist Diana Itzú Gutiérrez Luna, who has worked extensively with Zapatista communities, considers the economic warfare inaugurated by NAFTA part of a larger geopolítica del despojo, or geopolitics of plunder. There are currently 77 military bases in Chiapas, most of them located in the autonomous regions controlled by the Zapatistas and/or in areas rich in natural resources: water, uranium, and the barite used for fracking and the drilling of oil wells. “Basically, what they’re attempting is a territorial advance that implies the extermination of these worlds of indigenous life,” she says. The advance, she notes, has assumed a number of different disguises, from the “Puebla-Panama” development plan pushed by former president Vicente Fox to the “Special Economic Zones” designed to extend Mexico’s border model of tax breaks and low-wage maquiladora labor into the deep south.“
So, there you go. An ongoing war in Mexico between ELZN anarchists and the Mexican and US governments over NAFTA and the myriad other destructive neoliberal policies that have wreaked havoc upon indigenous people from which the Zapatistas originate and defend.
Why does Graeber speficially point to DeLong here, claiming that a war crimes tribunal exists that would try him? Just because DeLong merely supports these policies? Another search would have revealed to you that DeLong, in his role of deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in Clinton administration, wrote the economic impact estimates justifying and defending NAFTA. In other words, he was a core member of the team that architected the very trade deal that launched a war between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government.
Knowing now these key facts of which you were previously apparently ignorant, who in this twitter exchange was more justified in their (mutually hyperbolic) statements: DeLong, claiming that that Graeber does not know the power relationship between creditors or debtors - the subject of the Debt book - or Graeber, claiming that the Zapatistas would accuse and try DeLong for war crimes in Chiapas? I think the answer is quite obvious, but judging from the deliberately obtuse arguments that you’ve made, I suspect that you’ll be able to rationalize to yourself that none of what I pointed out here matters.
> To name just one of Graeber's essential lies: he makes the claim that Federal Reserve issuing American debt is privately controlled and weaves an extensive chapter based in fundamental ways on this misapprehension.
No, he does not. This is the only passage I can find where Graeber comes close to what you claim he wrote:
“The Federal Reserve—despite the name—is technically not part of the government at all, but a peculiar sort of public-private hybrid, a consortium of privately owned banks whose chairman is appointed by the United States president, with Congressional approval, but which otherwise operates without public oversight.”
As has been pointed out to you at least twice in the other comments, this is how the Federal Reserve describes itself. You’ve misremembered Graeber (here I will be charitable to you and not claim that you’ve lied) as saying the Fed is “privately controlled”, and your repeated assertions, as you’re backed into a corner in other threads, depends on this precise misremembering of what he actually wrote.
And furthermore, he does not “weave an entire chapter based in fundamental ways on this misapprehension”. The chapter is primarily about the role of the US military, its global domination, and ability to wage war in support of its economic interests, in the proliferation of the USD and its economic power. The paragraphs about the Fed and it’s precise association with the government is basically a sidebar.
> Statements of the form "I'm right because I'm important, and that's all I need to say" are not usually tolerated from almost anyone as a substitute for basic, bare truths. That they are accepted here is not only a comment on the character of Graeber but on the character of his followers.
I thought you were more acquainted with the long running dispute between Graeber, Delong, and a host of neoliberal/libertarian/Austrian economists. Apparently, you do not realize that the passage I quoted was from the final response that Graeber offered in their long running dispute, a dispute that included answers, in detail, of DeLong’s specious claims.
“I’m right because I am important” was not Graeber’s argument, his argument was along the lines of “if “Debt” was so riddled with obvious and crippling flaws, why as it been so influential in economics and anthropology? Why has it led to conferences and it’s own influential body of work that cites it? Why did it lead to a professorship at the London School of Economics? Collaborations with prominent economists?”
Given your attack on Graeber is riddled with errors, depends upon a misremembered quote, demonstrates ignorance of the content of his own long-running defense of his book, how are we now to judge your character as you have seen fit to judge me and his other supporters?
I’m going to assume that you’re basing your opinion of Graeber on Brad DeLong’s unhinged attacks on his work and character. There are no factual mistakes in “Debt” that impact the solidity of Graeber’s conclusions or historical narratives, most inaccuracies were minor and corrected in subsequent editions without changing the character of the book or the arguments within. Many if not most of DeLong’s attacks of inaccuracies are matters of interpretation, and in such cases it’s generally better to give the words of more accomplished and respected academics more weight than less accomplished or respected peers. As to where Graeber stands in relation to DeLong, I quote Graeber from a post here on HN:
“I hate to be seeming to blow my own horn, but when there's a crazy person out there using dishonest methods to try to destroy your intellectual reputation, and where there are honest people like you apparently taking the bait, some things have to be pointed out. The best measure of the accuracy and relevance of scholar's work is what other scholars in the field think of it. If you want to measure my standing as a scholar in anthropology, you might want to consider the fact that the most eminent scholar in the field, Marshall Sahlins, co-wrote a book with me. If you want to assess the merit of Debt, you might wish to consider the fact that there have now been two different scholarly conferences specifically dedicated to engaging with the book, attended by Classicists, Assyriologists, Medievalists, Economic Historians, Anthropologists, and other specialists in the fields addressed in the book. Do you think that would have happened if it was a "intellectually bankrupt" work full of obvious mistakes? For instance, Brad DeLong has been an economic historian for decades now. Has anyone even thought to hold conference to discuss the implications of any of DeLong's writings or ideas? Finally, if the argument is that I'm clueless when it comes to economics, I might ask why you think it is that on Tuesday I will be presenting a macroeconomic seminar at the Bank of England.
Sorry, but you've been suckered by a liar and a con man. I've honestly tried to just ignore the guy, hoping he'll eventually go away, but since he won't, I guess I have to explain what's really going on.”
Government, at least in nation-states that are sovereign currency producers, does indeed have first dibs on what people earn. Income taxes are usually withdrawn from salaries before employees are paid, and in the case of independent contractors, business owners, and capital gains taxes, individuals are on the hook retroactively for taxes.
The only perspective from which your statement makes sense is from the libertarian fantasy of government-as-parasite and individual-as-independent-producer.
It's qualitative energy, not quantitative energy. The same energy one feels when one experiences love, feels lifted up by a favorite song, or feels exuberance when one's team wins the superbowl.
Barter requires a coincidence of interests. Alice grows some pecans and wants some apples; Bob grows apples and want some pecans. They just happen to have their orchards near each other, and Alice just happens to trust Bob enough to wait between pecan harvest time and apple harvest time. Assuming all these conditions are met, barter works pretty well. But if Alice was growing oranges, even if Bob wanted oranges as well as pecans, they'd be out of luck -- oranges and apples don 't both grow well in the same climate. If Alice and Bob didn't trust each other, and couldn't find a third party to be a middleman [L94] or enforce a contract, they'd also be out of luck.
This is the canonical Myth of Barter, where some society is assumed to have existed that was so inconvenienced by the double coincidence of interests/wants/needs that it invented money. This never happened as there exists no evidence that a society existed that used barter as its main method of exchange; barter was used on the edges of society, spot transfers made between people who did not have the trust necessary to support debts.
Here's the passage where he refers to 'time-lagged barter':
Local but extremely valuable trade was, this essay argues, made possible among many cultures by the advent of collectibles, by the time of the Upper Paleolithic. Collectibles substituted for otherwise necessary but non-existent trusting long term relationships. If there had existed a high degree of sustained interaction and trust between tribes, or individuals of different tribes, so that they gave each other unsecured credit, this would have stimulated time-lagged barter trade.
I did read the article. In fact, I read this article years ago shortly after it was published as back then I was an anarcho-capitalist, very interested in non-state solutions to money.
Barter is a spot transfer. 'time offset barter' or 'delayed barter' isn't barter, and I've only seen this weird term used in libertarian/ancap/Austrian economists attempting to come to grips with the rather strong evidence against the myth of barter from which they derive their theories of money.
This article makes the same mistakes that the OP's article does - assumes the truth of the myth of barter. It even uses the odd term 'time-offset barter', which I have never seen outside of libertarian/ancap analyses. Barter is a spot transfer, 'time offset barter' isn't barter but something else.
The 'double coincidence of wants' problem of barter exists. What is a myth is the assumption that any culture used barter as a primary means of exchange. Barter was used on the edges of tribes, clans, etc. between groups of people who do not share the kind of trust that exists between members of groups, who will likely live out the entirety of their lives around each other.