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This week we have a discussion between David Graeber and Jonathan Conning, Associate Professor of Economics at Hunter College at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The discussion took place at Hunter College in April 2012. The topic was the book
Debt: The First 5000 Years.
From
Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter system-to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that 5,000 years ago, during the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.