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slothrop
Joined: 03 Feb 2003
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 Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:06 am Post subject: Debt |
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i've been reading a book called 'Debt' by david graeber. it has opened my eyes and made me think about what debt is. early in the book he gives the example of 2 friends walking down the street when they are approached by a man with a gun who says "give me your money."
friend 1 thinks, well maybe i can prevent this from being a total loss, pulls a fifty out of his wallet, hands it to friend 2 and says 'here's that fifty i owe you'. the thief is so morally outraged at what friend 1 does, and he makes the rules because he has the gun, that he opens his own wallet, takes out a thousand dollars, hands it to friend 2, and forces him to "loan" it to friend1. the thief then takes everything for himself.
does friend 1 still owe friend 2 fifty dollars?
does friend 1 now owe friend 2 a thousand dollars?
what if the man with the gun was actually a country pointing an army at two weaker countries demanding they pay their debt? beyond the threat of violence, is there a moral obligation for those countries to pay their debts? what if the only reason they are in debt is because the stronger country loaned money at high interest to them after installing a crony government or dictator who used the money to repress his people and make himself and his friends rich?(which is nearly the case with ALL third world debt) |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 7:36 am Post subject: |
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I'm not sure I get the analogy. So the stronger country is the thief, let's say country A and there are two weaker countries, say B and C. So country A gives money to country B then forces country B to lend that money to country C then country A steals the money from country C so then country C owes money it doesn't have to country B? Does this happen in real life?
Let's take the simpler idea of country A installing a dictator in country B then lending money to country B and the dictator spending it all on himself. Why is that country A's fault? If country A thought that was going to happen why would they have lent the money in the first place? How does it benefit country A? |
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denverdeath
Joined: 21 May 2005
Location: Boo-sahn
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 7:54 am Post subject: |
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ur both dumb. ur both not looking at micro vs macro economics. if either of u knew anything about anything, u would've pulled ur own gun out and blasted jersey boi to the pavement!
any debt is STUPID: get out of it! THATs THE best answer! |
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kpjf
Joined: 07 Oct 2012
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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| kpjf wrote: |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bisOCkCTpw |
They're all owed a tenner and they all owe a tenner so they will all end up with zero, as they did in the sketch. Seems logical, no? The fiver was just a distraction. |
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FMPJ
Joined: 03 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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The Graeber book is excellent. Not sure your explanation is particularly useful, but good on ya for reading it.
My favorite take-away from the book:
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Graeber in this book proposes a concept of "everyday communism" which he defines, when analyzing peasant lives as "The peasants' visions of communistic brotherhood did not come out of nowhere. They were rooted in real daily experience: of the maintenance of common fields and forests, of everyday cooperation and neighborly solidarity. It is out of such homely experience of everyday communism that grand mythic visions are always built." Also "Society was rooted above in the "love and amity" of friends and kin, and it found expression in all those forms of everyday communism (helping neighbors with chores, providing milk or cheese for old widows) that were seen to flow from it."
Closer to home, he gives this example: "If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, 'Hand me the wrench,' his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, 'And what do I get for it?' ... The reason is simple efficiency ...: if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them."
Moreover, we tend to ask and give without thinking for things like asking directions, or
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small courtesies like asking for a light, or even for a cigarette. It seems more legitimate to ask a stranger for a cigarette than for an equivalent amount of cash, or even food; in fact, if one has been identified as a fellow smoker, it's rather difficult to refuse such a request. In such cases—a match, a piece of information, holding the elevator—one might say the "from each" element is so minimal that most of us comply without even thinking about it.
Conversely, the same is true if another person's need—even a stranger's—is particularly spectacular or extreme: if he is drowning, for example. If a child has fallen onto the subway tracks, we assume that anyone who is capable of helping her up will do so. |
The thing which makes it "everyday" is this argument: "communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of "from each according to their abilities," at least to an extent",[3]:96 which is to say, the extent just described.
He proposes studying these practices and says that "The sociology of everyday communism is a potentially enormous field, but one which, owing to our peculiar ideological blinders, we have been unable to write about because we have been largely unable to see it." |
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