161–170 of 287 posts
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> "To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven" Can you just give the answers to these questions?
To be fair, he directed people to a >500 page book on the subject as a good introduction to some of these ideas. Do you expect him to effectively summarize a massive text in a single HN comment?
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You are basically arguing that most people should never be able to own real estate, doomed to live as perpetual tenants. Over the course of a lifetime, that is actually more expensive than a 30 year mortgage.
Actually many countries around the world don’t have a healthy borrowing market and they do fine with real estate. Some people have to live with family for a while or build in stages. It’s a challenge, but it’s doable.
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The answers are very complex. In the book, Graeber shows that debt is as much a cultural/social norm as any other abstract, social construct we've invented throughout history. What debt meant in early Buddhist Nepal or Sumeria or aboriginal Australia, and what it means in modern western economies is completely tied in with governmental/religious/familial etc. structures that existed in the given time. He goes into gr…
The book, page 3: > and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. I'm still willing to give this book a chance, but it's not a good look when the third page already contains an emotionally manipulative and gross misuse of "literally".
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Well, in part the ideas was not get into big debts. People could self-sustain much more easily in the past. No need to buy iPhone each year help on that. Is important to note that the jubilee was a measure against the worst case scenarios: Persons that sell themselves as slaves (or sons of slaves), people that lost the hereditary land and things like that. This also means the society was based around this expectation…
> People could self-sustain much more easily in the past. Why? Why has the ability for debt-free self-sustaining decreased?
If you live in a rural area, even today, you will see that is normal and easy to share and get food free or very cheap (in fact, a lot of food will not get in the supermarket for lack of ways to fully utilize the capacity!).
Is kind of simply to maintain a live if your are friendly in the community.
To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven, I recommend David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". I am not sure if some of the ideas about debt that Graeber argues are correct, but he does discuss a lot of interesting examples of debt from societies throughout history. https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/ https://en.wiki…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven" Can you just give the answers to these questions?
The answers are very complex. In the book, Graeber shows that debt is as much a cultural/social norm as any other abstract, social construct we've invented throughout history. What debt meant in early Buddhist Nepal or Sumeria or aboriginal Australia, and what it means in modern western economies is completely tied in with governmental/religious/familial etc. structures that existed in the given time. He goes into gr…
In English language there's a clear separation between debt and guilt. Debt is used for money, guilt for (e.g.) the legal system when talking about criminal activities. Those are 2 different words with 2 different meanings.
But in Dutch language we don't have different words for debt and guilt. Both concepts are essentially translated to the Dutch word for guilt ("schuld") which has a much more negative connotation than debt when talking about money. The same is true for the German language for example. And this might impact policies when dealing with debt, see: https://www.ft.com/content/a2c51e14-1ded-11e0-badd-00144feab...
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You are basically arguing that most people should never be able to own real estate, doomed to live as perpetual tenants. Over the course of a lifetime, that is actually more expensive than a 30 year mortgage.
And I think you're arguing that the disappearance of mortgages would have no effect on real estate prices. IMO, and that of many others, loose credit has been the major factor driving up property prices to their current insane heights. There's a place for credit, but right now I think it does more harm than good.
To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven, I recommend David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". I am not sure if some of the ideas about debt that Graeber argues are correct, but he does discuss a lot of interesting examples of debt from societies throughout history. https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/debt/ https://en.wiki…
> "To anyone wondering what debt "means", or if some debts will ever be repaid, or wondering about "jubilees" where debts are forgiven" Can you just give the answers to these questions?
A debt is a very natural thing for humans, because we feel compelled to provide value to people who can't pay us yet.
Even before money people had gifts and favors - we give with the expectation that we'll be given something in the future - or we say 'you owe me one' when someone has helped us through an issue without sending us an invoice.
So the genius of fiat currency is that you get to represent these IOUs as a standard, fungible currency, such that I can take the debt you owe me and transfer it to someone else, so now you owe them. Being able to trade debt like this essentially turns debt into the currency.
The benefit of this being that economic growth is not limited to how many gold coins we can mint -- we can become as indebted to each other as we like -- the more people go into debt, the more money we have to trade. Pretty neat.