Org Web Adapter

Editing pages/debt_the_first_5_000_years.org

:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       a4a0f50c-c844-4bf9-a229-b2af17b0cd85
:END:
#+TITLE: Debt - The First 5,000 Years
#+AUTHOR: Martin Graber

- tags :: [[id:53094c43-ee60-4ae3-828e-5e4e3320ea79][Books]] [[id:e248a8ee-7f8b-47b9-a2d4-e161280f2fc4][Economics]] [[id:9327300d-b64e-4968-836c-813c8a7e66db][Anthropology]]

* Author's history

- I hadn't realized the author was actually a leader of the Occupy Wall Street movement
- He is also fashions himself an anarchist and was black balled in the US
  academic circles. He now works in London

* Cyclical nature of society

- A large portion of the book is taken up with considering whether human
  civilization really does "get better" over time, or whether we are witnessing
  large cycles of the same basic behavior
- What we call the Dark Ages, was actually a complicated system of feudal lords
  where peasants often had easier access to credit than in empire systems like
  Rome or Asoka's Indian empire, where credit was tied up in military forces and
  the projection of force