/lit/ - Literature

>>16277852
damn rip

how

Thought he inserted far too many political opinions into Bullshit Jobs, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless desu.

F

At least he won't see where we end up. Rip.

>>16277852
literally who?

Oh no, a dead anarchist... What a loss, how will the world go on?

>>16277988
bad

>>16277852
>Graeber's parents, who were in their forties when Graeber was born, were self-taught working-class intellectuals in New York.[8] His parents are Jewish

>>16277852
covid?

>>16277852
F

>>16278037
My guess is heart attack. He seems to have been happily on holiday at the time, and it looks like it came as a shock to his wife.

Utopia of Rules is a great book I really recommend. RIP

>>16277852
That's sad. He was one of my heroes.

Seriously though, what did the Irish mean by this?

Also, his book on debt is mostly wrong, but still worth reading.

>>16278082
Precise compensation systems are common in ancient societies. There was a price to pay for killing the member an ancient Greek family in prehomeric times for instance, it could be negotiated between the family of the murderer and the family of the victim (failing negotiations would generally lead to the murderer having to move to another city). Of course it wasn't quantified as rigorously as with the Irish, but there was a price.

That's one of the reason murdering your kin was such a bad idea, there would be nobody to negotiate on your behalf and you'd have to leave or be executed.

>David Graeber died on 2 September 2020 in a Venice hospital at the age of 59. Just two days before his death, on 31 August, Graeber's wife Nika Dubrovsky tweeted a photo from Venice with the caption of “Venice. Dark, wet and chilly”. Graeber himself had been recently active before the time of his death when he posted a video to YouTube on 28 August saying that he had been feeling "a little under the weather" but that he was also beginning to feel better.

I read Debt a while ago. I'm too stupid to formulate a critique of it, but I thought it was an interesting read for the summer. RIP.

>>16277852
So anthropology is back to being a sad
joke ?

>>16278082
>Seriously though, what did the Irish mean by this?

It means if the Irish thought master poets were worth 7 slave girls, I wonder what master bartenders were worth?

> Also, his book on debt is mostly wrong, but still worth reading.

What does it get wrong, and why is it still worth reading?

>>16278113
>Precise compensation systems are common in ancient societies.

You find this way of doing things very well worked out among the barbarian tribes. Take the system of the Salian Franks for example where all sorts of penalties are outlined depending on the specific nature of the injury.

>>16277852
I liked debt book. and the guy wasn't that old, its strange he died now. anyway F for a real one. rip.

>>16278165
Suspicious that he would.

>>16278082
Not that weird, Wergild for instance is similar.

>>16278157

>>16278157
>why is it still worth reading?
He examines things from a different angle, and brings many interesting historical facts to light.

>What does it get wrong
He really concentrates on the role of social obligation for the pre-civilized. If you really wanted something someone else had, you could make it known that you would love to have it. The other would be expected to give it to you, but you would now owe him. And so, exchange would be built on a system of favors enforced by social pressures.

This is all interesting, but Graeber errs in thinking this overturns barter as something groups would have engaged in.

>>16277852
Rip. Cited him in a bunch of early Christianity papers I wrote.

>>16277852
Rest in decentralized power.

>>16278276
give one example of bartering then

>>16278276
barter is a back-formed concept, it's never existed on its nor will it ever. trading stuff with your neighbors is primitive communism done to maintain social relations. just try refusing to gift back and see what happens

>>16278319

A man giving a spear for some shoes.

>>16278163
Yes there were surprisingly developed and lawyery already in those times. Also death by murder or involuntary homicide was probably less rare and outrageous to them than it is to them.

>>16278348
give me a well documented example where a society organizes it's economy along barter

>>16278358
*than it is to us

>>16277852
Hope it hurt. Communists belong in body bags.

>>16277852
who cares. he contributed nothing. he didn't say anything that any thinking person doesn't already know. just another blood sucking academic praying on student loans.

>>16278380
what did you contribute anon?

>>16277988

As poorly as it is already going.

>>16278360

We know groups start using a common unit of exchange. This might be precious metal, but it could also be salt, or butter. Bartering would have been the condition immediately before this, and it wouldn't have lasted long. How would we even document this brief phase?

>>16278380
>Punker poster
>praying on student loans.
How do teachers collect on student loan debts?
(Education is free in more civilized nations)

Graeber doesn't think barter exists, but we've seen barter systems emerge in prison camps and in communist countries. How does he explain this?

>>16278418
how do you think they get paid?

>>16278382
nothing. which is why nobody should waste their time with me.


which is my point.

>>16278113
A similar thing (Gjakmarrja) still persists in Albania. There is a brilliant, factually detailed novel about it by Ismail Kadare.

What killed him? The coof?

>>16278497
Thanks, will put it on my reading list.

>>16278427
Not by the people putting students in debt.

>>16278045
He posted a video the other day saying he was feeling under the weather but getting better. Sounds like the classic covid sick->feel better->feel even more sick->die the next day

>*Angry René Girard noises*

>>16278113
First known English code (aeltherbert) also had quantified values not just for life but each specific limb and finger lost in a fight, eg. Always thought it was weird how you could kill a man or chop off a finger and your only punishment would be a fine

Younger than my parents yikes. Kinda hoping that the rest of my family and I live forever. Don't want any of us to die

>>16277852
I'm gonna miss this lil nigga like you wouldn't believe...

>>16277852
Damn. I know of several academics who made their entire career plagiarizing his stuff and writing it in my native language - no idea how they got away with it, but for sure, they're now going to suffer from year-long writer's blocks.

>>16277852
>Anthropologist and anarchist activist David Graeber has 69. He was died.

>>16278195
Wouldn't be surprised if the Zionist Jews got him. He was one of a handful of Jewish voices that was pro labor-party and workers rights, and frequently criticized Israel from a very leftist perspective. The vid below was published only a few months ago, and might have pissed off the wrong people in Mossad. Especially with his reputation as the figurehead of the occupy movement, and the current governmental crusade against anarchism. Graeber makes for a formidable target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oOj7BzciA

Whatever happened, he was a legend who will be remembered with the equivalence of Socrates and Plato for what he did in terms of political-economic theory. There is something that feels so wrong and unexpected about his death. I was constantly seeing him pop up in my twitter feed just last week, I feel like something bad might have happened.

RIP you beautiful bastard Graeber, I'll never forget you, or let anybody else.

>>16277852
S

>>16277852
>anarchist
>in the london school of economics
>supporting regime change in favour of uk interest
LMFAO. I'm glad he rots. Sometimes the curse hits just right

>>16278689
Graeber isn't that big of a deal and he's saying in this video what any honest good-faith person with a brain in the west believes.

>>16278689
And yet he supported Israel 2.0 in "Rojava."

>>16278689
>Whatever happened, he was a legend who will be remembered with the equivalence of Socrates and Plato for what he did in terms of political-economic theory.

let's not get carried away

>>16278734
>Graeber isn't that big of a deal

Lets see you say that in ~25 years when the whole monetary policy of every first world nation is reorganized around his philosophy and the mechanics of MMT. Graeber is the reason Occupy became culturally influential, there would have been no intellectual axis to the movement if it wasn't for his work. Just because they haven't achieved anything yet doesn't mean anything. Occupy, and a general hatred towards the international banks is going to have far reaching cultural and political consequences that plebs like you obviously don't understand. The guy practically created the fertile conditions for a second American revolution.

>>16278736
>And yet he supported Israel 2.0 in "Rojava."

Kurdistan and Israel are nothing alike. The Kurds have no power whatsoever, while Israel controls the US military. Graeber only spoke on their behalf to aid them in achieving self governance, and even to liberate them from dependence on the US and Israel for existence. Only Turkish or Arab ideologues have this insane obsessive hatred for the Kurds, it's no wonder they want nothing to do with those nations.

>>16278791
Why not, he wrote the first history of Debt. It's a massive milestone in the history of civilization, and he did it. If there is any sanity left in modernity, we should building statues of this guy and putting them up around banks all over the world.

>>16278797
Was he that special as an academic though, or just a token intellectual for causes like Occupy? I've only read Bullshit Jobs, but I didn't find it to be incredibly insightful. The topic itself is very interesting, but the book is full of his own largely unsupported opinions, and he doesn't do a great job of evaluating other theories regarding the proliferation of bullshit jobs.

>>16278797
>Kurdistan and Israel are nothing alike
In fact, they're both settler colonial projects propped up by western imperialist powers. It's not the tail that wags the dog, no matter how much you think about it.

>>16278418
*Pinker
Pinker posters are cancerous

>>16278819
settler colonialism is when you've lived in a place for millenia

Graeber hates London because of this

>>16278819
The Kurds live there. They’re not Europeans colonizing the place.
Yes, they’re getting aid and arms to add to the confusion of the invasion and western intel is drumming up far leftist support for them. It is not the same as the Zionist project

>>16277852
Good. One less nutjob.

>>16278898
>NOOOOO! YOU CAN''T CRITIQUE CAPITALISM! I LIKE XENOESTROGENS IN MY FOOD AND FUNKOPOPS

Is bullshit jobs worth reading?
From the reviews I read, while all recognizing the concept as something seriously worth studying, said the book was in the end sadly pretty shallow.

>>16278846
>The Kurds live there
I know, along with Assyrians, Yazidis etc. This doesn't mean that they need their own state which becomes an ethnostate by default.
>They’re not Europeans colonizing the place.
No, they just take the resources (oil etc) and hand them to USA by using USA weapons. Also, think a bit more about this:
>imperialist, fascist state is drumming up the support of the "far left"
whatever the american "far left" is. In any case, this doesn't make sense: either the far left is complicit (and in many cases it is: green new deal with looted resources, free healthcare which is paid for by other means etc) or it's naive and what you said is nonsensical. Why would the right drum up support for a leftist cause? And who benefits from it? Certainly not the syrian people, be it kurds, yazidis, palestinians etc. This makes you a social chauvinist, the YPG an imperialist watch dog who hand out oil and other resources to the class you're supposedly against, and "Rojava" an imperialist project, much like "Israel" was and has been since its inception. I will not continue this conversation but I will add a few resources in case you weren't arguing in bad faith, or in the off chance someone else is interested.
on assyrians in syria, and the ypg, and rojava:
https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/community/2016/06/03/under-fire-from-all-sides-syrias-assyrians
https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-assyrians-of-syria-history-and-prospets-by-mardean-isaac/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKC-UcEFicU&list=PLpJgqcdJS61r62CkUfvbArsQKhNx56MDc
https://www.mintpressnews.com/carving-kurdish-state-us-new-end-game-syria/227936/
http://www.aina.org/reports/ace201701.pdf

1/n

>>16278809
>Was he that special as an academic though

Yes, I think so. Read 5,000 years of Debt, and you might change your mind. You have to keep in mind he's an anthropologist, and not an economist. He studies and observes human behavior, and does his best to report what he sees. That being said, he does a good job of demonstrating a more rational origin of Money, that is literally genius tier historical scholarship.

Personally, what you call "unsupported opinions" is what I call God-tier reasoning and rationality. This is what sets Graeber apart from the rabble, his ability to philosophize about his field and deconstruct how cultural systems function. This is why I compare him to Plato and Socrates, it's because he's capable of asking bigger questions that go beyond material reality and delve into the deconstruction of culture and history. If you are looking for a mathematical manual of how the economy works, you won't find it with Graeber. What you will find are a series of critical inter-disciplinary insights into human behavior, recorded history, and money that you won't really find anywhere else. Truth is that in order to understand money, you need to understand anthropology and human behavior, which is not always a clear-cut objective field but relies to some extent on interpreting reason and intent. Only truly extraordinary philosophers can do this with skill, and Graeber was one of them.

>>16278933
on krg/iraqi kurdistan/peshmerga:
http://www.atour.com/media/files/news/assyria/20170925-Assyria-Nineveh-Erasing-Assyrians/20170925-Assyria-Nineveh-Erasing-Assyrians.pdf
https://www.assyrianpolicy.org/news/krg-imposes-new-discriminatory-regulation-on-assyrians-in-ankawa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVqcmgAtjp8
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-us-favored-kurds-abandoned-the-yazidis-when-isis-attacked
https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/romancing-rojava-rhetoric-vs-reality/
https://thewallwillfall.org/2019/10/10/syria-turkey-the-kurds-and-nato-explained/

Rojava, YPG, Assyrian oppression:
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Christian-journalist,-betrayed-by-the-indifference-of-the-West-over-Syria-45312.html
https://syriadirect.org/news/%E2%80%98religious-freedoms-political-restrictions%E2%80%99-amid-dispute-over-local-education-policy-assyrian-writer-reflects-on-minority-rights-in-syria%E2%80%99s-northeast/
https://cpj.org/2018/10/prominent-syrian-writer-yousph-arrested-in-northea.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKC-UcEFicU
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/discontent-among-assyrians-in-syria-s-northeast
http://www.aina.org/reports/ace201701.pdf
https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/romancing-rojava-rhetoric-vs-reality/
2/n

>>16278944
On imperialism, destabilization, balkanization:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/carving-kurdish-state-us-new-end-game-syria/227936/
https://www.mintpressnews.com/kurdish-connection-israel-isis-destabilize-iran/229745/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-forces-to-stay-in-syria-for-decades-say-militia-allies-idUSKCN1AX1RI
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/383291-syria-kurdish-balkanization-us-forces/

Kurdistan:
"Erasing Assyrians" 100+ page report: http://www.aina.org/reports/erasingassyrians.pdf
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2017/8/16/iraqs-yazidis-and-assyrians-remain-unconvinced-by-kurdistan-referendum
https://medium.com/@DeadmanMax/on-the-removal-of-assyrian-mayors-in-nineveh-by-the-kurdistan-democratic-party-kdp-ffde5556b564
3/3

>>16278940
>Personally, what you call "unsupported opinions" is what I call God-tier reasoning and rationality

I take your point that he's an anthropologist rather than an economist, but if he's making economic claims then he needs to defend them like an economist. In Bullshit Jobs he acknowledges that free-marketeers believe the rise of bullshit jobs can be attributed to pointless government interference in the private sector, and (in my opinion) he doesn't really show why that claim is incorrect. Likewise, he doesn't really show why his own theories about the rise of bullshit jobs are the valid ones.

Don't get me wrong, I found the guy interesting and I'm certainly open to the possibility that he's right, I just didn't find his arguments to be too compelling.

>>16278933
They invite their neighbors to join their confederacy and ranks. And I’ve heard them deny they’re seeking separation from Syria. Only the spooks pouring money into this draw up maps that make them look like a new nation.

>Hand the oil resources to the US
What can they do? It’s the Americans responsibility to defeat the hive these monsters work out of.
>whatever the American “far left” is
Indeed. Foreign troops come from all over though. They were told it was like the spanish civil war, the poor kids. It is a confusing mess by design. The US are getting exactly what they want out of the situation because they’re the big dogs of the world. How can we, or the Kurds, stand up to that?
Fracture is all we can hope for I think sometimes.

>>16278819
>>16278933

Dude you do realize that Syria, Jordan, Iraq and a bunch of other ME states didn't exist until the British and French divided up the borders for themselves? In other words, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel etc... are just as legitimate as Rojava. The entire territorial demarcation in the middle east needs to be erased and redrawn. Picking on the Kurds isn't going to do anything to further that project. Although I do agree with you that they are useful idiots to the US and Israel, I disagree that they are anything like Israel. Israel is the mastermind behind the events in the ME, the US is the brainless Cannon-fodder and engine that makes it happen. In this case, Israel is the head that wags the tail, and you have it backwards.

>>16278940
>he's an anthropologist, and not an economist.
And not a very good one at that.

>>16278912
Why waste time on something so obvious? Let me summarize it for you:
>The vast amount of Office work is pointless and only exists to make executives and managers feel good about themselves.
What the kike forgot to mention is that women are the main beneficiaries and perpetuators of this system. Women are simply too incompetent to do anything other than administrative busywork and the corporate setting reminds them of high school/college, giving them an illusion of a social circle.

>>16279004
What are you talking about? Being an economist is easy

>>16278969
Well keep in mind he had published 5,000 years of debt a whole 7 years earlier and had done lots of speaking tours on it. He probably felt that some of his finer points were common sense, or more thoroughly covered in his previous work. You might need to read his chronology.

As far as this statement goes:

>In Bullshit Jobs he acknowledges that free-marketeers believe the rise of bullshit jobs can be attributed to pointless government interference in the private sector, and (in my opinion) he doesn't really show why that claim is incorrect.

He assumes it's common sense to his audience who likely already read his previous work. It's because economic activity is a human construct, created by people, "Free Markets" don't just magically appear, they are willed into existence and protected by governments and associations of people. Graeber, and lots of other theorists have gone over this point over and over again, about how there is no historical basis for believing in free-market economics. None. Whatsoever. It never existed, and it is a fantasy of 18th century thinkers like Adam Smith. He covers this in his earlier work, and he assumes his audience is familiar with these basic concepts. The reason you don't understand Graeber is because you don't understand the history that informs his arguments.

>>16278497
Same still exists in Somalia. I've been asked to help pay money for deaths. For example a driver crashing a car and some passengers dying, but the driver survived. This driver was from my clan and we had to pay a blood price.

>>16279004
I promise that he's more adept than you in both of these fields, and that alone nullifies your opinion.

>>16279014
Women are the benficiaries of a system that forces them to work a pointless job when they could be at home taking care of kids?

>>16278998
>Israel is the mastermind behind the events in the ME, the US is the brainless Cannon-fodder and engine that makes it happen.

Help me reconcile:

On one hand it's obviously true that most office jobs (at least the non-professional 2-degree jobs) are pointless in the sense that you get 8 hours a day to complete sometimes a half hours worth of work. The rest of the day is filled with dragging out your work to shirk on the job and make yourself appear useful or dealing with office social politics, another thing to fill meaningless void in job. Now that more Americans are going to college we just separate men from boys with professional and masters degrees but I digress.

On other hand the economy demands that both parents of a family of four work. Virtually impossible to raise a family on one income. You would think that market demanded a higher labor supply/women in work force because it needed the bodies, but this clearly isn't the case. What drove this? I'm sure a firm would rather pay a man 70k/yr to do job x than a man and a woman 40k/yr each to do job x

I see people praising Bullshit Jobs, but I found that entire book to be something of a strawman. A small number of jobs are definitely meaningless, but most people would say there are bullshit parts of their jobs that could probably be done away with, not that their jobs as a whole don't matter. He also had this weird thing where he connected his (mostly nonsense) thesis with the idea of a Newer Deal/Green New Deal and proclaimed that the government mostly can't create meaningful work, an idea very much contradicted by actual history.

Instead his solution was a UBI, which he loved in large part because he had this frankly insanely naive vision that freed from labor most people will artistically and creatively flourish. Sorry, but most people are in fact not particularly creative, and there's a large body of evidence that it isn't psychologically healthy for people to not feel that they're doing something meaningful.

The actual history of UBI systems is that they amount to a business subsidy and give companies an excuse to pay shit wages. Also a UBI at a living wage for literally everyone would almost certainly be massively inflationary.

>>16279020
Based somali pirate

>>16277852
Oh damn I liked his book on debt and his academic arguments with economists and with nick szabo lol. rip big boy

>>16279069
Billions in US subsidies to Israel, proxy wars conducted by US troops, supplying of arms and aircraft to Israel. Yes I agree, we must develop something better for the US, and a way for Israel to get along with their neighbors without the use of violence and territorial conquest.

>>16279075
>Virtually impossible to raise a family on one income.

A big part of this is that housing supply is artificially constrained. Compare the big American cities to Tokyo.

>>16279105
>large body of evidence
>psychology

>>16278082
>his book on debt is mostly wrong
False.

>"Bullshit Jobs"
>"Managerial work—the organization and integration of human effort into purposeful, large-scale, long-range activities—is, in the realm of action, what man’s conceptual faculty is in the realm of cognition."
>"If there is any one proof of a man’s incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker (or of a professor) who, doing some small, routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine (or the lectern of a classroom), does not choose to know how the machine (or the classroom) got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unnecessary."
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/managerial_work.html
Bam, Graeber pre-emptively refuted.

>>16279173
Yet NY has thousands upon thousands of empty luxury apartments owned by rich foreigners or not owned by anyone at all. And let's not pretend Tokyo housing is affordable, even if prices aren't increasing. If more apartments or yuppies are built in SF, is that really gonna make housing more affordable? Prices will rise so long as yuppies will pay and most will be priced out. Yimby fantasy that building more will solve housing problems.

>communist
>jewish
>dead

>>16278418
the US Government borrows money to pay subsidize student loans, and then the students pay interest on the loans, and then taxpayers pay interest on the debt.

>>16277852
Ok? Good

>>16279038
>Women are the benficiaries of a system that forces them to work a pointless job when they could be at home taking care of kids?
Yes because it liberates them from the shackles of marriage and kids.

>>16279209

More luxury apartments do help everyone as the rich upgrade leaving less expensive options open for others.

There are other things too though. Small apartments are too expensive to build because of the various rules.

>>16279014
Based post

>>16279156
It is a favoured child state, and I was agreeing right up till then. Try to let old prejudices go through

>>16279075
>On other hand the economy demands that both parents of a family of four work. Virtually impossible to raise a family on one income. You would think that market demanded a higher labor supply/women in work force because it needed the bodies, but this clearly isn't the case. What drove this? I'm sure a firm would rather pay a man 70k/yr to do job x than a man and a woman 40k/yr each to do job x
Everything but healthcare, housing, and education are cheaper while these three things are much more expensive. Why?
>Housing
Anglo countries artificially restrict supply through building restrictions, immigration, and in the US many urban areas become functionally unlivable due to black violence.
>Healthcare
The US is the guarantor of profit for medical companies. Medicare is forbidden from negotiating with pharma companies. Doctor supply is artificially reduced by the AMA cartel. Importation of drugs made abroad is illegal (the companies that sell them make them abroad and mark up 100x).
>Education
Most people would be better served taking an IQ test for a job but IQ tests are taboo in the US as of Griggs v. Duke Power and other cases which put you at risk of a Civil Rights suit. In fact in CA it's illegal to issue an IQ test to a Black person. This mandates putting people through higher education. The government subsidizes student loans. Thus, colleges raise tuition, because they know the government will keep subsidizing loans. Many parents also pay for private schools to improve their child's chances of admission to a top college, which we will probably see increase as the SAT is abolished in the name of racial equality.

As far as "fake jobs" go, most of them really have to do with legal compliance - in particular compliance with the Civil Rights Act, or are some other form of communist makework scheme. I mean when people complain about "the Administrative State" what are they actually administering?

>>16278360
Aristotle brings it up for why currency developed in the Nicomachean Ethics. Something about how it's impractical to trade 200 shoes for one couch.

>>16279031
See, I trust the opinions of other anthropologists, too.

>>16279324
old greek and roman authors would just make thing up and talk about places they have never been to. it's all a mix of speculation and fiction

>>16277852
I've had his debt book on the shelf for almost a decade. His smug manner put me off reading it after just a few pages.

>>16279075
this is marx 101, and the reserve army of labour, or supply and demand if you prefer.

with more people in the work force you have a bigger supply of labour so you can get away with paying everyone less, since everyone becomes easier to replace

>>16279419
That isn't inherently Marxist, that's basic supply and demand. For some reason -- and I'm not saying you -- some people believe supply and demand doesn't include labor.

>>16279419

The thing with non-specific labor though is that it can easily pick up and leave for some other job if the pay isn't adequate.

>>16279453
Are you one of those "the worker and the boss sit on the table as equal parties " retards ?

>>16278832
what was it that glorious revolution did that it entrenched the elites so much?

>>16279453
do you seriously think a person who has to pay rent and feed 2 kids can just quit their shit job at a supermarket and leave?

>>16279446
the marxist part is that the owners want to keep a number of people unemployed to keep costs down.

this is an explicit policy by the american fed, for example, they want about 10% of people unemployed because to employ them all will cause inflation

>>16278282
what did you cite from him?

>>16279419
>with more people in the work force you have a bigger supply of labour so you can get away with paying everyone less
>the marxist part is that the owners want to keep a number of people unemployed to keep costs down.
Hmm.

>>16279075
I don't see how what you're getting at is contradictory or anything. Companies would rather pay a small amount of people to work a maximum amount of time, even if it results in less aggregate productivity, then spread that out. Capitalism should minimize the amount of work but also maximize its intensity.

>>16279419
The absolute size doesn't matter, it's relative. Also wage deflation isn't much of a thing but stagnation.

>>16279549
Everyone knows full employment becomes inflationary but Keynesians think you can manage that. The American Fed actually still legally has a dual mandate for "maximum" employment and stable prices (although the reality is different and the Fed obviously can't do that with pure monetary policy)... the European Central Bank is the one that legally has a pure price stability job and legally is based on more monetarist foundations.

>>16279393
That's Herodotus. Like, mostly just him, and he was writing before Plato. Thucydides provides a much drier and accurate account of the history he covers. Aristotle did his own research all the time as well. Stop being a faggot.

>>16277852
i read his essay on bullshit jobs just a week ago. it was actually inspirational

>>16279393
Well isn't that convenient for Graeber. If anything contradicts his theories, it must be fictional

>>16277852
This really bummed me out when i heard about it.

RIP

How does everyone know who this whackjob weirdo is?

>>16279738
He’s famous/infamous in intellectual circles.

>>16279738
left-wing board knows about left-wing anthropologist, why is this a surprise?

>>16279668
>Capitalism should minimize the amount of work but also maximize its intensity.
>he still believes the efficient markets/capitalism nonsense

>>16279724
I'm just telling graeber actually used sources like ancient irish/frankish law codes and descriptions of primitive tribes and even went to afrika and observed some of those semiprimitive tribes himelf (madagascar if I remember correctly, it's been years since I read anything by graeber)

is there a greek author who did something similar?

>>16279738
wackjobs are often the people who see the truth. most "respectable academics" never had an original thought in their lives and are only where they are because they keep repeating the establihed narratives and (((many people))) are interested in keeping those established narratives alive

>>16278406
It was debt not barter hence: "Debt: a 5,000 year history". People would lend to each other, there would almost never be an immediate transaction in primitive societies, unless it was done under extremely hostile circumstances like paying a blood price.

>>16279796
You bad at reading? I said unregulated capitalism results in less productivity by overworking a smaller amount of people and driving others into absolute poverty by rationing work only to maximize nominal profits not real social utility.

>>16279991
paying attention is for nerds

>>16279446
not really sure whats going on here? the longer a business runs its a law that they get more efficient and can even cut labor, why would that be correlated with supply and demand? usually they would even grow labor and introduce jobs instead because their business is doing so well and helps with the economy

>>16278912
>Is bullshit jobs worth reading?
> From the reviews I read, while all recognizing the concept as something seriously worth studying, said the book was in the end sadly pretty shallow.
Well his Debt book is much better, but his Bullshit Job book was based off an article that he wrote few years ago, it's a short article and there is everything on it, the book is just an extension of it where he interviews people complaining about their job

The article basically says that Keynes thought technology would rid us of labor with robots and stuff, but yet what happened is we work more than before, why? according to graeber, the system didn't want to free people up from labor so (((they))) invented meaningless jobs to keep people under control and supervision.

Bernard Stiegler and now David Graeber died... probably my two favorite lefties, dead 1 month apart. Quite bummed by this.
His book on debt was very influential on me for personal reasons.

>>16280443
pretty sure anarchism is sitting far away from the left on your political pole

>this job is bullshit because I say so
And nothing of value was lost

>>16280536
t. assistant to the regional junior vice-president of logistical scrum management

>>16280497
Graeber is a self-proclaimed "libertarian leftist" tho.

>>16280553
>you have to make money in a way I approve of!
Seething impotent lefty

>>16280580
i looked up the current political number line and it seems like it ran through several random number generators. not sure why they are putting anarchism which is anti state to the left of communism which is complete state control. libertarian would be somewhat to the left of anarchism if fascism is the complete left and anarchy is the complete right

>>16280619
oh no it's retarded

Is "Rojava is imperial settler colony" a gigacope for Western leftists to explain why they didn't go join the only viable revolution?

>>16280630
>Rojava is imperial settler colony
what

RIP. His work will be seen pretty corrosive to anarchism in years to come though.

>>16280664
why though

>>16280628
put your own definitions into the identity politics and show your own intellect. anarchy is complete individual and fascism wants to completely take away freedom

oh i forget that when someone browses a /lit/ board he is less inclined to think for himself. that the real spectrum you believe in uses a horoscope measure and recognizes that the months on a calendar is not 0-12 but you can put pony tails on each month and say "oh socialism definitely fits with my horoscope" or "i'm totally feeling like a scorpio"

>>16279186
Yes, it's entirely wrong

>>16280667
A lot of his work reveals the ontological primacy of the state and authority.

>>16278424
He doesn't now.

>>16280619
What the fuck are you talking about?

>>16278424
He does believe barter exists
He doesn't believe barter is the original form of a economy which is not exactly but it's worded in an incredibly dishonest and sly way to propagate his retarded views

>>16280690
care to elaborate

Bullshit jobs has been refuted by histories
Lenin was the first to try and get rid of them and it failed pretty badly
The whole arguement hinges on a baby's understanding of the modern economy
Admittedly, shorter hours or even cutting a day altogether probably wouldn't hurt much if at all but Graeber was always too blinded by muh ideology to come up with something that makes sense

>>16278424
barter emerges with people who used money before but lost access to it, essentially

rip

>>16278045
>Bullshit jobs has been refuted by histories
>Lenin was the first to try and get rid of them and it failed pretty badly
Not really familiar with the concept, can you elaborate on this?

>>16280740
look, modern economy is completely fake.
western economies produce nothing and most money is made by moving it around different banks.

in the last week there was unprecedented collapse of gdp in britain, yet the stockmarket is surging.
central banks just pour money into companies and they, instead of using it on something valuable they buy back their stock to make them more valueable. and the line keeps going up!

>>16280675
serious anarchist thinkers thought about ways to organize society, although along more just lines. only a wild animal is completely free anon, that life is not worth living.

fascism is a slippery beast. the pure germans were free enough in nazi germany, it's not like hitler controlled your every hour.

>>16280757
Lenin spent the years when the USSR was essentially still in the womb trying to create his utopia
That involved getting rid of the "bullshit" jobs or their early twentieth century equivalents as well as markets obviously
This didn't go very well and he pushed forward the new economic policy which was closest to what Yugoslavia was up to during the Tito years
This got shot down when Stalin took over though and the USSR began to move towards its Stalinistic and later Post-Stalinistic-Stagnant self throughout the years of Stalin's rule
As I said, I'm for cutting unnecessary edges and giving people more freedom to pursue happiness rather than moneymoneymoney but the reforms Graeber actually proposes in bullshit jobs are really extreme and we arguably have historical proofs in Leninist USSR amongst others

>>16280608
nope, just someone who does actually productive work
management are leeches to laborers, shareholders, statesmen, everyone else left or right

>>16280736
Reveals the pervasiveness of chartalism and their inascapability; also reveals the dependence of markets on governing authorities. Broadly, he reaveals the dependence of social and economic relations on governance and authority.

>>16280815
and its*

>>16280807
I'm sure you understand what's necessary in running a business

>>16280801
yeah, no there were no bullshit jobs in the early 20th century. most people worked in agriculture or in factories actually producing goods.
at most there was a bureaucracy with some useless people

>>16277852
The only thing I know about this guy is he apparently coined the phrase "we are the 99%!" He was onto something there and I often find myself wishing this became the go-to leftist slogan, more so than "black lives matter!" As much as I won't argue with that, I will argue for the idea that "we are the 99%!" contains and relates to it. All politics is to an extent an illusion, the vexatious thing about it is that it concerns things that have meaning. It's necromantic magic, which explains why people have and always had to die because of it. If everything could simply be as it wishes without conflict, there would be no politics. All politics ultimately is, is a predatory spirit to eat. And this culture is spiritually carnivorous,
hence its violence.
I realized at this point I've completely veered of track and honestly I have no no point to make. If you've made it this far I appreciate you giving me your time. All that said I do wish the class based protest schema became more decisive than the racial protest scheme, because that has a chance of improving everything for everybody.

>>16280815
how would that invalidate anarchist-communist positions?
if anything it takes down the free market dogmas that oppose them

>>16280892
"black lives matter" and the fag rights are a deliberate glownigger psyops to divide the "99%" from each other. the number of articles mentioning racism and other things like that sharply shot up after occupy, I had the picture somewhere but I can't bother to find it.

>>16280815
This is definitely true, but IMO Anarchism technically just means a society without rulers. It means representative government. America was founded before Anarchism became a formal philosophy, but the democracy created by the founders has exactly the same sentiment. In other words, you can have state authority without rulers, if the system of government is representative, and the leaders function as public servants, not rulers.

In American democratic experiment was the first time in European history that public officials were perceived as the servants of the citizenry, and not its rulers. The American state could exert authority and control with the blessing of the people. Anarchism may yet survive if we set ourselves to perfecting the American system of government and make it more true to the vision of the founders.

"He was a real intellectual; very real: not one fake cell in his brain, not one fake bone in his body.

He thought independently.

He was monstrouly original.

He had intellectual courage.

The world seems much much smaller today than before Sep 2.

David, RIP"

Taleb was quite fond of the guy

>>16281047
sorry to break it to you but whoever said this was describing himself to get virtue points from society

>>16280984
>Just reform modern representative "democracies" bro
Yeah k

>>16280984
america was founded as an aristocratic republic. it was in no way democratic, voting was restricted to landowners and most of the offices weren't even elected but appointed.

americans were terrified of democracy

>>16278082
His book on debt was cringe and his book on bullshit jobs was mostly a waste of paper that added nothing to his original article.

Graeber by the pussy

>>16281153
You seem to be in the wrong thread

>>16281164
>that fucking painter
just wow

>>16281164
You seem to be on the wrong social media platform, tripfag.

>>16281243
someone should do a philmarilion on the butterfly anon too

>>16278424
>Graeber doesn't think barter exists
Total nonsense. Stop strawmaning his views.

>>16280892
>he apparently coined the phrase "we are the 99%!" He was onto something there

It really depends on how you look at it though. If you make $30,000 a year, you're in the 1% globally speaking. Does that make you a bad person? Should your vast wealth be forceably distributed to war orphans in Angola?

>>16281305
>Should your vast wealth be forceably distributed to war orphans in Angola?
He advocated debt cancellation, loans which IMF and World Bank have pushed onto Third World countries to fuck them into whatever the US geopolitics was at the time

>>16280892
yea the 99% cot ng that "anti-racists" fight for at a base level is more disproportinate on a class level than a race level yet they get mad if you bring this fact up. It's clear they've been had.

>>16281885
the IMF should be glassed regardless

>>16278372
>the corporate west is our friend and we must defend it
have sex

>>16278599
>René Girard
literally no such person?

>>16281989
you either have women try to be creative and thus unfortunately fail, or they are so far back they have to consistently reiterate what man had once created but thus inevitably run the meaning to the ground. if you are a female you can take it for what you will.

>>16280984
Why does everyone try to find some way to recover anarchism or democracy out of refutations of it

>>16280630
>Is "Rojava is imperial settler colony" a gigacope for Western leftists to explain why they didn't go join the only viable revolution?
No, most of them are just vulgar third-worldists who think America isn't very nice, so they don't know what to do when they're supposed to back a power America is backing, because they're more opposed to America in a moralistic way (while almost always being Americans or Anglos themselves) than having any coherent belief.

I read his debt book a year ago and I’d highly recommend it, very interesting. Rest in power (or in non-hierarchical voluntary association).

May his time come soon.

He had one of the warmest smiles

>>16277852
s to spit

>>16277852
Anyone who doesn't realise his influence on making the mainstream discourse move towards a more humane stance on the organization of society hasn't read his works or is an absolute retard.
He was an embodiment of what an intellectual should be.
RIP

>>16280630
100% YES

>>16278082

>>16283805
The Mainstream discourse is still overwhelmingly framed the way liberals want and about what liberals want.

>>16279266
work will set you free as the sign on an Austrians work camp said

>>16283805
>move towards a more humane stance on the organization of society

Society is self-organizing though. What do stances matter?

>>16284578
What does self organizing even mean?
If you produce a change in the way of thinking of enough people then they will push for that change and eventually make it happen. That is the role of the intellectuals, shake consciences and produce new ways of thinking.
It is because of people like Graeber that occupy wall street was made possible.

>>16277852
>dead anarchist
Well, that is a good thing, anyway. I like a nice whitepill first thing in the morning, thanks for posting, anon!

>>16278599
>most of the great world religions are anti-sacrificial
What a retard

>>16285010
You're heartless. David Graeber was a good man. I was fortunate to be able to meet him twice.

>>16283773
>shoe polish spittle

>>16283805
>humane
LOL anarchists push the idea that there is no god or afterlife.
Thus there no objective morality, only what is good for my genetics and that of my race. Pic unrelated, but interesting as a fact. I checked the stats btw, they are buried but they are on the doj website. Obama stopped the doj from publishing any subsequent data so 2005 is the last year they were made public, but there is no reason to assume the numbers today are not comparable.
You need government and police, not anachism and kumbaya, when 100 white women a day are raped by negroes.

>>16285116
Poltard, you don’t understand.
If that pic is so unrelated, don’t post it here.

>>16285159
how about u stop posting jezebels as well while we're at it. and don't fight in Graeber thread. don't even respond to this.

>>16285225
>christfag code

rip fren

>>16285319
RIP

Post Graeber's best, disregard off topic posts

mods sticky this

No-one has actually read his anthropo articles?

>>16279948
This. Barter is a myth. Primitive communism was corrupted by debt and universal medium of exchange (money), right from the start. You cannot compare the little boho Stiegler to David Graeber.

>>16283867
>Implying the liberals are not a superstructure determined by the capitalistic mode of production base.

RIP

F

F

>>16280354
i take that back

brother had COATS

>>16279200
>that useless middle manager position created for the factory owners nephew is actually really important because Ayn Rand says capitalism only creates jobs that are needed for efficiency and profit.

>>16290688

Bullshit jobs is perfect. We all know it. The world is waking up to that concept and his death may help us realize it before it's too late

>>16279200
All this demonstrates is that Graeber refuted Rand.

>>16290688
Is this a Communist dogwhistle?

>>16292635
Shut it down ,the kulak knows !

>>16292635
we are all communists, just some wear nice coats, rip graeber david

He died in a hospital, what a bureaucratic institution to die in

>>16293526
you can't expect consistency from anarkiddies

>>16293610
Which is why they're based. Consistency is for lifeless pedants.

>>16293610
In communism we’ll have hospitals.
Why would you expect us to not go to for-profit hospitals?
>Not so fast, anarchist. That food was grown on a capitalists farm
Fucking joking, right?