David Graeber on a Fair Future Economy

David Graeber is an anthropologist, a leading figure in the Occupy movement, and one of our most original and influential public thinkers.
He comes to the RSA to address our current age of ‘total bureaucratization’, in which public and private power has gradually fused into a single entity, rife with rules and regulations, whose ultimate purpose is the extraction of wealth in the form of profits.
David will consider what it would take, in terms of intellectual clarity, political will and imaginative power - to conceive and build a flourishing and fair future economy, which would maximise the scope for individual and collective creativity, and would be sustainable and just.
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[@user-yj7um6hv1d]

Rest in Peace, David :(

[@lassibanjo]

"A promise to bond holders is sacred and that to people is meant to be broken" Good one David. RIP.

[@ujean56]

It is critical that academics unravel and articulate the things in everybody's life that everyone knows about, but that confounds them and are hidden. David Graeber was a master at this. We have lost a major intellect and talented communicator. It is so unfair for ordinary people and those of us hungry for intellectual self defence.

[@nickprohoroff3720]

Awesome. Smashing the opaque prison walls of our minds. Thank you good sir.

[@markmccormack1796]

I think David would have been fascinated by how people's attitudes towards work have been changed by the pandemic.

[@paulbolton9739]

Get in👍✅

[@Cooliofamily]

The fact that 99% of people who woukd be able to contribute to society In a creative and meaningful way are too busy struggling to keep food in their mouths and a roof over their (and their familys) heads

[@michaelowen4582]

Lots of company though. I predict the current rise of Fascism will be brief. Graeber paves a road to an Indicator ready explanation for the need for big changes.

[@KingMinosxxvi]

Its not that simple.....you have to also consider the conditions that lead to human creativity and ingenuity. You need an environment that produces challenges that are difficult but not insurmountable. You know if that documentary I watched on Sumer was a good place to glean a reference. ;)

[@cjlooklin1914]

@@KingMinosxxvi I disagree, I think boredom is a much greater motivator for creativity. I remember as a child the worlds I would create out of sheer boredom, I let my curiosity guide me. One day I would learn about morrel mushrooms then spend the whole day looking for them in the woods. I never found any but I'd have fun. I started building things, and taking things apart to see how they worked. In highschool I built a spot welder, a jet engine, and an electric skateboard out of boredom and curiosity, nothing else, now that I'm an engineer working for corporation, sitting in endless meetings shuffling paperwork around... my soul wilts, I'm too tired to build anything

[@KingMinosxxvi]

@@cjlooklin1914 That's nice

[@shodospring]

@@cjlooklin1914 When I was a kid, I had a very creative mind and interest in many things, and my father was able to fix anything - the dishwasher, the TV, the car, etc. He taught a lot of this to my brothers. He taught me a little - like why are there rainbows in puddles - but didn't seem able to teach a girl anything practical. (I'm sure he didn't mean to destroy my creativity when he didn't help me build a "clubhouse" at age 10 or so.) In college I had a lab partner who actually did all that stuff - spent his free time in tech junkyards, built a Heathkit receiver from scratch, including making hiss own printed circuit boards. And I had a later lab partner who said "is this a variable transister" - neither of us would have wanted to admit to the prof that we didn't know. You had something special as a kid. I never got the engineering job (or physics job, actually) but I got my soul back. I hope you get yours back too.

[@thewiseturtle]

The very end is the truly important part. We need to stop telling everyone, including ourselves, to shut up, and start encouraging everyone, including ourselves, to share good ideas for problem solving, so that we have a wealth of options to choose from in our personal, familial, community, and global lives.

[@ModernConversations]

That’s heterodoxy.

[@angelosasso1653]

The part with the regulations is exactly how I feel for years now. Everybody talks about free markets and stuff, but essentially big companies and institutions try to build a wall of bureaucracy around them, to protect themselves. As politicians aren´t able to see trough this, they adapt what they hardly understand. Trade regulations on many goods are so complicated, you need a dozen lawyers to get everything right. In my current job I have to deal with batteries and alike. Just to get regular transport done, you have to basically order a over 1000 pages lawbook, train your workers for several days, keep lots of papers, just to tell the shipping service, to be careful and have a fire extinguisher in his car. WTF?!

[@gabrielajonczyk5663]

Don't you think that it is a matter of words? the words in administrative and law work is so absurdly multiplying itself to make them be smart

[@angelosasso1653]

@@gabrielajonczyk5663 Definitely one of the reasons. You have to justify your existence after all...

[@Numenor76]

"Finance is other people's debt", touché. "Bureaucracy is always an enemy of democracy", Cornelius Castoriadis.

[@MrJamesHoy]

Christos Karsanidis finance is the documentation of complex relationships. Debt is more than a promise it is the mean by which we hold people accountable for their promises. Greaber has great insight but his conclusions are mislead by his obvious ideology.

[@GregoryWonderwheel]

Money is debt and finance is the scheme of extracting profit from other people's debt transactions.

[@ChristophTungersleben]

Herzog. Finanz is to find someone else pay.

[@panemetcircenses6003]

@@MrJamesHoy Debt is a promise. The application of violence is how people are held accountable for their promises.

[@jameshoy8440]

@@panemetcircenses6003 violance is one way of hiding people to account but by no means the best way. I you fail to pay your debt, I can refuse to extend further credit. I can refuse to do any more business with you. I can make it known in my community that yon don't pay debts etc. Now, the sleight of hand played by the left is the redefining of violence as a refusal to extend goods and services to those who need (want) them. Curiously, to fail to pay a debt is not considered violence.

[@felixlipski3956]

this is probably his most intense and concentrated speach

[@geoPoliticalanalysis_global]

My thoughts exactly! I cannot believe such a brilliant man is gone. May he RIP

[@felixlipski3956]

;-;

[@geoPoliticalanalysis_global]

@TheEsotericZebra Excuse me? RIP, stands for Rest In Peace

[@Nickzim891]

This is an edited version of the lecture

[@tonisthebonis1]

I love that you can hear him working through what will be Dawn of Everything

[@garyseven1894]

One of the few leftists that discusses money and its value and creation without the usual Paul Krugman dismissal of why banking is so key in the economy. There are many ways to think of money and/or whether we really need it. Something that modern "education" has ignored all my lifetime. Schools don't teach it. It would be a hanging offense. That's why politicians don't acknowledge what he said about the Bank of England admitting that money is really [ WARNING...the following words are subject to a severe tongue lashing by Rachel Maddow et al if detected by the MSM ] .......created out of thin air!!! There, I said it and so the Dave Greaber.

[@danielhutchinson6604]

Mentioning the UN without talking about Nelson Rockefeller's involvement in the land that the UN building sits upon, or the framework of the original Charter, seems to remove the institution from the control of the people who can find benefits from their actual application to international events...... From the use of the Domino theory as popularized by Hank Kissinger, as the designated mouthpiece of the Rockefeller Bros, in the "Prospect for America" document, to the designation of the first Duke Of Baghdad, becoming Paul Bremer, the influence of Wealthy Families exerts it's web of influence on Foreign Policy, as it continues to enable profits to the beneficiaries of the Standard Oil Trust..... We seem to claim to be a democracy, but the actual implementation of the Governments activity seems to be dictated by those who continue to accumulate profits from directing the selection of Candidates, to advice they freely distribute among the members of representative government. The idea of an Oligarchy operating the US Government for it's own profits, is pretty easy to trace.....

[@sarcasmo57]

Well said. Society needs a re-think.

[@fhhfhdfdhhdhhdfhdf138]

13:10 what do free people owe each other, great bit of Graeber

[@TheBandFiles]

"It seems to be what we have now is a political system which has essentially become, for the last thirty or forty years, a war on the human imagination."

[@Orf]

The reason people don't write about burocracy is bc its too hard too spell.

[@ellyreads4886]

This cannot be any truer :D :D

[@DerHammerSpricht]

you almost spelled it right in German, if that makes you feel better :)

[@P4DDYW4CK]

Cool videos Matt.

[@baronmeduse]

Haha. Get 'bureau' then the rest is easy.

[@fellowcitizen]

Hey Matt, please interview Tulsi about her H.R. 8452 Protect Brace Whistleblowers Act :)

[@acobster]

Rest in Power, David Graeber. One of the few times I ever agreed with Alex Jones was when he appeared in the film Waking Life: "Resistance is not futile. We're gonna win this thing. Humankind is too good. We're not a bunch of underachievers. We're gonna stand up and we're gonna be human beings! We're gonna get fired up about the real things, the things that matter! Creativity! And the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit!"

[@jamiehartman3350]

"The system continually cannot justify itself from its own merits." I found a first principle :D wonder what else that applies to?

[@MrDirtybear]

I liked the point about bureaucracies apparently being Utopian in their promises but always making rules which make sure they don't deliver, and then blaming A.N.Other for their bureaucracies failure to deliver. It is a logic has punctuated my life ; I got blamed for being depressed when I was trying to follow the promises which were not going to be delivered on. The alternative was to be accused of cynicism if I queried systems on the the lack of delivery on promises made. The sole choice was of being either accused or blamed. It seemed almost Orwellian. Pity about the rushed delivery of the speaker, but the message is still good...

[@publicopinion3596]

I thought he was Andy Defresne from shawshank redemption on the thumbnail

[@garretthipp7096]

A promise that we make to bondholders is scared. A promise we make to the public, well come on, is made to be broken

[@ReblQueen]

Yes creating financial barriers in the form of expensive certifications and paperwork. I've always said the first person to do something was not certified to do it. They either taught themselves or learned from someone else or even created new way to get things done. I was in massage school and it was so expensive and I just thought the first person to do this didnt need to pay to do it. I understand having a certian knowledge about what you are doing but the price is very high now with little financial return for most things you go to school for. Now trade schools are being pushed because college is prohibitively expensive, and I've seen the price jump for popular trades as well. It's crazy. We need people in all types of professions to keep our world running. We enjoy art yet expect artist to be starving and will then pay huge sums of money after the artist does so they never see the fruits of their passion. We are all born to this earth and shouldn't have to pay to be alive. The majority are living in poverty but are the ones keeping the world running. We have been trying to abolish slavery in all forms for generations. There is always a new form of slavery because the few have to feel better than others, even though they would literally be nothing without the work of others.

[@thomasd2444]

05:25 - In 2009, 71% of profits claimed by J P Morgan Chase came from FEES and PENALTIES

[@noahsark2009]

Poor people get hit with more of them because they can't afford the overdraft protection accounts, which leads to penalties for checks bouncing, late fees on rent and car payments, etc etc, poor credit scores, high interest rates, inability to maintain car insurance, renew driver's licenses, leading breaking the law, court fees, jail time etc

[@danielhutchinson6604]

The 5 billion buck fines just seem to bounce off the Rockefeller Family Bank like a short summer rainstorm, of little intensity and hardly enough to dampen their enthusiasm, or profits......

[@nthperson]

What he is really talking about is the prevalence of rent-seeking privileges that exist under the laws of almost every society. The solution can be found in comprehensive reform of how government raises revenue. The optimum amount of public revenue to be raised is the aggregate rent associated with the value of land and all other natural assets. It is the privatization of rents that causes the concentration of income and wealth and the level of instability resulting in our cycles of economic boom and bust. The political economist Henry George explained all this during the last two decades of the 19th century. Those who have benefitted most by the status quo effectively managed to prevent the reforms George advocated.

[@Gi-Home]

ATM machines in southern France do not always give you the correct amount of money. When you have a problem with an ATM the bank branch will not shut down the machine and will attempt to make some delaying excuse where the date to correct the problem keeps moving back. In a period of 2 years the ATM's messed up 3 times, fortunately we were able to recover the money every time. Sadly upon sharing this story with friends we found that the immigrants were not always successful in recooping their funds, one Vietnamese couple shared their experience of the bank stealing €800 from their account.

[@bojman]

Great man and thinker he was

[@roidroid]

Why wasn't the full video uploaded to KZbin somewhere? I would like to add it to my watch-later list please. This is the first RSA video i've seen that hasn't been made available in full. Bit odd.

[@ERRATICCHEESE2]

vonkruel Thanks for link. Just realized that this is the same guy who wrote that great, massive book on DEBT. I think he needs to get 100 geniuses in a room and together write a book about designing some kinda neo-communist post capitalist jiggy.

[@rsaorg]

roidroid Hello, this event was not live streamed and therefore there is not a full replay available for this event, only this edit. However, I see that vonkruel has pointed you in the right direction for the full audio podcast. Many thanks

[@charliespider7598]

+ERRATICCHEESE2 that book u r asking for is currently being written in rojava

[@Notecrusher]

Hope they get it written before they're destroyed :(

[@maxwellhill4754]

Then you actually follow the rules and gotta spend an hour on the phone with the supervisor's supervisor and explain the policy to him then he realizes the system deducts payment from accounts in the opposite order the card agreement states

[@PFlow007]

Really well thought out analytics... theoretical remedies don't make sense in an advanced technological society... bring manufacturing back...

[@FuzzLyricz]

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[@Sinleqeunnini]

This man is a prophet, an economic voice calling out from a neo-liberal desert.

[@Sinleqeunnini]

@Dirk Knight Read the words of the Nevi'im in the Jewish scriptures. They've been spot on for more than two thousand years.

[@Sinleqeunnini]

@Dirk Knight No. I was talking about the things in the human experience that really matter.

[@Sinleqeunnini]

@Dirk Knight The Nephilim are irrelevant to this topic.

[@Sinleqeunnini]

@Dirk Knight Get back to the original topic, and acquit yourself with decency.

[@ximono]

Playback speed: 0.85 (only way my brain can keep up with the brilliant brain of Graeber)

[@spinkyl9559]

Their site has no full podcast.

[@SomeOne1121]

RIP.

[@ximono]

Graeber on democracy: People who live in socieities that consider themselves democratic don't actually practice democracy, has no experience practicing democracy and don't really know what it would be like to do so. We're all taught in a thousand subtle ways through the infusion of bureaucratic principles in our lives that democracy _wouldn't_ be possible, and we don't even realize this is happening. If you try to demonstrate that _real_ democracy is possible, logically, you just couldn't. On the other hand, if you _show_ people, it has an amazing effect, because it immediately opens up horizons. If people sit down and say, "Wait, 80 people can sit in a room, or a thousand people can sit in a park, and make a collective decision with no leadership structure? Wow, all my life I've been taught to believe that was impossible." We're in an interesting situation where the political structures which we are used to referring to as democracies are for the most part created to suppress what the people who created them thought of as democracy. When I try to annoy Americans, I always point out that nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution does it say anything about America being a democracy. There's a reason for that. The people who created the Constitution hated democracy and said so all the time.

[@jabel6434]

Silent on a basic flaw: free movement of capital without being balanced by the free movement of labour.

[@michelepiteo7179]

beaurocracies are like crab-lice~~weren't those umpteen numerous beauro-clerical positions as infra-structure of Soviet Communism much the same?.I'm in love. Where did Graeber pop up from ?

[@kyliecoyne8399]

Rest in power.

[@Joefrenomics]

I like his point about the robots

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

+Joseph Frey I don't. A world full of robots means people dependent on robot engineers and their repair mechanics. Work is meaning, as the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich has talked about. Gandhi did it with cotton, and ecovillages like Damanhur are doing it. Visit a place like Brazil to see how small shops do woodwork and metalwork, even shoes. Modern wind turbines were reinvented not by NASA or even German high tech. They were reinvented by Danish artisan mechanics. Then they were supported by an owners' association and wind co-ops. Elon Musk is making his electric car factories mostly robotic. Not a great way to build a job culture.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

***** You see this kind of thing in terms of "compulsion" perhaps because you are some kind of anarchist. Try "it is necessary." I talk from the point of view of understanding human social psychology, and that in order to generate a society of empowered people, it is necessary to stop excluding people and start empowering them. The hidden secret of "freedom" is "RESPONSIBILITY," especially "SOCIAL responsibility." It's not about Musk doing it for "everybody." The vision is to do it for more and more people, and have a system that accomplishes that like Equal Exchange which is now opening co-op cafes, Arizmendi Cheese Shop co-ops, Green Worker Co-op social entrepreneur training, and Mondragon industrial co-op opening multinational factories and offering co-op status to all of them. In case you haven't noticed, the mainstream auto industry has been creating obstacles for Musk's company. That fits in with the larger obstruction that has been happening around Climate Change action. That reflects the kind of disempowerment that has happened across America because of the Big Shareholder Corporate Executive controlled corporate system. Doing my masters on the rise of renewable energy, I discovered the grassroots democracy, the economic democracy, in Denmark that led Danish citizens from protests to artisanal mechanical invention to citizen lobbying to wind co-operatives in the grassroots development of wind there. Then came the Germans. You may know that the Germans have become the world leaders in solar deployment, mostly residential, and have 65% of their wind administered by stakeholder owned co-operatives. Then, there's the Mondragon industrial co-op in Spain, and the MST agro-co-ops in Brazil, and Fair Trade all over the world, and cicoop in Europe. Like the US Federation of Worker Co-ops motto says, Faster Father Together. Anarchists are like cats, apparently, and Occupy Wall St. has a few hardy souls who have kept on because they have begun to grasp a broader vision. For success, that is necessary. Get clear about what is "compulsory" because someone else says so, and what is "necessary" because things work and succeed sustainably that way.

[@cmndante6698]

+Green Peacemst In an anarchist economic democracy you could actually make decisions on what should be mechanised so I don't understand your distancing yourself from that idea and wanting to grasp onto compulsory wage slavery (if I read you correctly).

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

Conn Doherty Right, and in my preferred terminology, in a co-operative commonwealth, using automated machine processes could be made when "necessary." As for "compulsory wage slavery," that's not my argument. The original context here is Elon Musk using a highly automated system to make Tesla e cars. He is clearly making decisions without much consciousness of sustainable social economics. Considering he's in a disadvantaged market position in the conventional point of view, I'll cut him slack. However, in terms of sustainable social economics, Mondragon Co-op Corporation in Spain and Germany's social capitalist Mitbestimmung (worker councils) and Mittelstand (small industry support) and pro-labor policies, and Danish social capitalism, a business which incorporates labor participation and ultimately seeks to give employees ownership is what is socially sustainable. Germany and Denmark show that in their prosperity and social and environmental advancement. In this context, Musk isn't dong "compulsory wage slavery," he's doing "compulsory automation and labor exclusion."

[@siginotmylastname3969]

Green Peacemst You've said a lot of nothing without replying to the point made. The reason compulsory labour is not good is because it creates a class system where we have those who create tangible products at the top, scientists and engineers and the likes, while those inclined towards care work, child raising and unable to work are left as dependents of society. For all your speak of democracy what you suggest sounds like an eco friendly version of Adam Smith's capitalism, and since this produced the ecological disaster we're in I'd suggest you rethink your ideas. Look into Murray Bookchin and more importantly Abdullah Öcalan, they look at ecology from an anarchist perspective.

[@therevanchist8508]

RIP to a real one

[@arthur_crotchymede]

Terry Gilliam foresaw all of this in 1985. ;)

[@uttaradit2]

we've got it in lumps out the back

[@tonywords6713]

even "predicted" 9/11. creepy

[@quarkraven]

Braaziiiiil 🎶🎵🎶🎵

[@DaveE99]

Money is created by banks when they make loans

[@curtbarnes4294]

A certifiable genius, lost far too soon.

[@n1mbusmusic606]

1973ish is when wienstein says everything went wrong, or about that time. VERY interesting. would have loved to have seem them both speak to earchother.

[@aaronwebb1548]

Adam Curtis' documentary "Hypernormalisation" covers the growth of Neo-Liberalism and terrorism from the 70s until now. Donald Trump actually sparked the destruction of New York in many ways, in the 70s.

[@elietheprof5678]

The useless complexity of government bureaucracy, mirrors the useless complexity of code in software. Have you noticed how slow most websites have become, despite computers being faster than ever?

[@DaveE99]

Real work is work that’s meaningless.

[@JDOE20]

9:26 cri

[@elietheprof5678]

Sometimes I think bureaucracy is actually a problem of decentralization. Too many different people trying to do too many different things. Laws that fix the flaws of other laws. Policies that act as band-aids for other policies. The whole system could be simplified if there was a clear, consistant vision of what we actually want from the system.

[@kvaka009]

The amount of misunderstanding of what David Greaber is saying in the comments is remarkable. It's like many people can't think structurally and systemically.

[@yoramgt]

9:20 How do 1,000 people sitting together make decisions together on a basis of equality? Only someone who gets to set the agenda for those people (i.e., who is a member of the elite within thar group) and then gets this agenda "approved" by that group can think this is possible.

[@frankjennings4489]

Just because banks make most of their money from debt instruments and penalties doesn't mean that the rest of their industries aren't actually producing something of value. Most of the economy is still people producing goods and helping other people. I get his point though. As time goes by and bureaucracies expand, that real value is being produced by fewer and fewer people. Most of our productivity gains are being siphoned off by taxes and being used to support bureaucrats within the corporations themselves.

[@skaterdavedownsouth]

I’m with you. I want more conversations less about money, but about wealth. Wealth created by labor is spread farther and farther from those doing the labor. And the justifications for it have become more obscure, or at times and worse yet turned into catch phrases that the laborers repeat, unaware of their own participation in their increasing poverty.

[@ethanstump]

not only the corporations and government, but also nonprofits and NGO's, and universities. almost all types of organizations have an administrative layer that is overfunded, which leads to the underfunding of the core parts of the organization. but since admins think admins are the special part of the organization, they administrate accordingly.

[@johnpanos2332]

what?? money as debt!! watch it on youtube

[@Achrononmaster]

It is probably not a good idea to index so much on sustainability without defining it. The right extreme libertarians will be likely to soon take cultural ownership of the term sustainability but use it purely as an ersatz for conservatism and status quo. True progressive sustainability has to be something much more and must involve enrichment of the world, and advancements that reduce energy use, increase efficiencies, and reduce waste and war and increase peace and a unity in diversity, not just sustaining activity.

[@K1989L]

Well said!

[@user-sb3ch3sb2w]

The Breeder of the Heavens and the Earth Has an example He would have a child and did not have a companion ۖ And He created all things and He created all things ُ And He was above all: What is good for both of them? He did not have a female companion (his wife), and He created everything and He knew everything.

[@stfnba]

David dismisses labour value theory too easily. It is/was not just about manufacturing. on its basis, it simply say that anything has useful value in society must have been created by social beings, that is, human beings. The alternative is really thinking that the capitalist can create (exchange) values out of his head, out of his genious, without workers.

[@alinebaruchi1936]

Hiiiii...

[@patbranigan6501]

Going into space is not immediately profitable. Now it has brought on and furthered the industries that do make money but as we now we have them and of course private companies will advance them. Except they don't because innovative advancements take time and money and are not immediately profitable. Downward spiral of greed based economics. Maybe that is why greed was said to be one of the seven DEADLY sins?

[@NicholasGruen]

"I did a little research on this and …" I'm starting to learn that this is the way Graeber introduced many of his most gung-ho claims. The sad thing is that I'm quite sympathetic to many of the things he's arguing, but just to claim that regulation increases wherever 'deregulation' is pursued. It's often true, and it's sometimes not true, and to have any confidence in the guy you're listening to, you need to know that he's not trying to snow you. Alas it was never the case with Graeber.

[@aaronwebb1548]

Watch out for people suffering from Amathia. They yearn to waste their life and yours.

[@randallsmith5631]

Free Trade? LOL. ROF-LMFAO

[@humanashekhossain1364]

So what's the solution? I have one , if you wanna know, knock me.

[@ekbergiw]

JPMChase makes most of their money from fees because they do so many different jobs, and they don't want to spread out cost of operations over to every customer.

[@pillmuncher67]

Yeah, they're such nice and agreeable people! They just want to help.

[@smellypunks]

5:50 he is describing Cronyism rather than capitalism.

[@pillmuncher67]

But that's how Capitalism has always worked. You now have to reply: "Well then it wasn't real Capitalism!" and I must answer: "Like how the Soviet Union wasn't real Socialism!".

[@DoctorOzelot]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[@kforest2745]

There’s only a few occupations that are necessary like hospital, fire dept, police, grocery for example. I would have loved to have been born into a system where my knowledge was learned at home. My father’s generation were building their home. I went to school for 13 f’n years and learned nothing useful which really pisses me off. People have no idea of the time that’s robbed from them over stuffy phoney bureaucracy don’t tell me slavery ever ended that’s bullshit. Who the hell does the system think it is to pull kids out of the home the audacity it’s arrogant.

[@kforest2745]

@Dirk Knight What’s “useful” about it, I was already talking and reading and writing before I started school I didn’t need the rest of it. Even history was a lie like you’re telling yourself now. You sit in a classroom with four chalk walls for thirteen years and you’re telling me that’s “useful?” I wouldn’t hire you. I just got finished telling someone that the only reason school existed was to distract people away from incest. We’re way past that now, “loser.” My grandfather is way more intelligent than you and he never had to finish school. You’re manipulated into thinking you’re learning something “smart,” slave. My grandfather was no fool and you sound lazy, “sweetheart.”

[@kforest2745]

@Dirk Knight You talk like a moron, “darling.” Like I said, incest. You don’t know your history.

[@kforest2745]

@Dirk Knight You shouldn’t have responded then. All you’re asking for is an ass kicking then.

[@kforest2745]

@Dirk Knight You do realize you talk like an inferior child still in public school right. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste my time hurting you my mind finds you repulsive.

[@kforest2745]

@Dirk Knight You already did.

[@rotatopoti]

This guy sounds like Bill Gates.

[@ModernConversations]

He’s ironically the AntiGates. The ContraGates. Call me Billy Gates gotta a crib in every state. -A$AP Rocky

[@furyofbongos]

"(paraphrasing) Making up rules people can't follow and punishing them for it, for example JP Morgan Chase... is the driving force of capital accumulation now." Quite an extreme over-generalization. Does Dell do this? Apple? Samsung? Ford? GM? Walmart? The barber shop? The grocery store? My local Thai restaurant? He said "driving force of capitalism now." Don't get me wrong, I like anyone who is anti-state, just please avoid such blatant over-generalizations. Banks (at least JPMC) yes, but all that makes up capitalism? Hardly. (I don't defend capitalism if it's defined as what we have today as a partnership between private market forces and government violence). Take out government and let people self-organize, and let's see what kind of market relationships form and how they get named.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

+furyofbongos The financial industry has its own particular totalitarian toxicity. His analogy and focus on the political dimension I think is not giving him the more exact economic ideology that he's filtering. That would be, "profit-maximization, no matter what happens to the consumer." Anti-tort legislation has been anti-consumer in general, as part of that. Along with that is the cost-externalizing way that corporate accounting works. Dell, Apple, and the rest have shifted much of their manufacturing to China with its devastating slave labor and lax environmental laws. The relentlessness and thoroughness of the corporate production system, with its massive advertising and campaign financing, functions by making people obey and making alternative values alien or subordinate to their profit-maximizing ones. Filter the precise message from all of that.

[@furyofbongos]

+Green Peacemst - "profit-maximization, no matter what happens to the consumer." >> a horrible and clearly unethical aspect of our society. "cost-externalizing" >> To me this means market players using government coercion to have non-customers pay some of their expenses. Not part of a truly free market. The only thing that can make any market player "totalitarian" is partnering with a totalitarian player, and that would be government. (IMO)

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

furyofbongos "cost-externalizing" is generally understood to be about displacing costs also on customers, although through channels outside the visible purchase transaction and conventional dialogue, which I believe is well presented in 1995 Cliff Cobb et al "If the GDP's Up, Why Is America Down" The Atlantic. It is anyone and everyone, all stakeholders, who are affected by the negative impacts of a company's actions, including customers. Apple's toxic e-waste and slave labor in China doesn't actually just affect the Chinese, since it feeds a tragic system of corporate actions that are pumping global warming, toxic waste into rivers and oceans, reinforcing the WTO's oppressive anti-social and anti-environmental policies, etc. How does "totalitarian" apply to companies? I would agree that companies and governments have a fundamental relationship with each other. However, Big Shareholder or privately held companies have consistently shown bad or conservative behavior, like Big Oil or really Big Anything, Soda, etc. If you consider Big Oils' propaganda that confuses the Climate Change issue, for example, that influences and controls government policy in the US, that's pretty aggressive abuse of power. The fact that a Big Oil company is a Big Shareholder owned and controlled becomes significant if you consider how corporate governance operates for employee-owned firms in stakeholder capitalism. Alvarado St. Bakery is an employee-owned firm that is also highly solar-powered, for example. Democratic ownership, or economic democracy, is a principle that correlates with a number of important qualities of a sustainable democratic society, especially markets and government, as in places with high proportions of economic democracy like Denmark, Germany, and Emiglia Romana Italy, and Mondragon Spain, and Vermont. The totalitarian force of corporations in interaction with government can still be seen in Germany where VW executives faked some mechanical issues recently, and in the austerity financial position taken towards Greece.

[@furyofbongos]

+Green Peacemst - "Big" [you name the company] receives many anti-competitive advantages from getting the guns of government to do its bidding for them. Why do the companies get all the blame? Why does the government rarely if ever get any blame at all? It's always the "big powerful corporations" that are evil and who "control" the government and who have all the "power." This is ridiculous and oddly blind. Corporations do not have a monopoly on the use of force, governments do. Governments have all the power. The people who call themselves government can simply choose not to do the corporations bidding for them yet they don't and they sit back and laugh while they watch the corporations get all of the blame.

[@robinhoodstfrancis]

furyofbongos "Ridiculous and oddly blind" seems to me apt in its relevance to the widely used mainstream attacks that politicians and government are to blame. What and who controls the process by which politicians are elected, and how they think and decide, whose interests they pay attention to? They are not simply individuals dancing to a philosopher's tune of "free will." Their mode of thought in terms of corporate controlled free market ideology, the prevalence of obedient politicians, obedient to corporate executives, indicates that corporate executive ideology justified by money and market dominance, are the "brains" and the "muscle" of the operation. The independence of government force was demonstrated by Chavez's success in Venezuela, where the disgraceful inequality of the society was not built with the same complex context that the US's is. He was from the poor, he identified many critical issues that needed to be addressed, and miraculously got elected, and later got reinstated by sympathetic military after the US-funded coup. Nevertheless, because he failed to incentivize key enterprises in food distribution, etc, the oligarchy in control of various economic sectors and enterprises has reasserted its ugly self now under Maduro's less deft administration. The myth of US economic and military imperial freedom means that most Democrats, instead of diving into the socioeconomic vision laid out by Ralph Nader and lately Michael Moore, and the Green Party and businesses as socially responsible as Health Food stores and Elon Musk's Tesla, are like Hillary Clinton. The hopeful sorts supporting Bernie probably include many who drink Big Soda and drive Big Autos and don't have renewable energy. And all that money that they keep paying to Big Biz Walks and Talks. Denmark and Germany, on the other hand, have had citizens lead efforts and enterprise to install renewable energy, as a powerful example. No economic power, no political power in the US. Post World War II corporate empire and Cold War have taken their toll, and money walks and talks like it does everywhere. The trick for the Greens and Human Rights people is to realize that Natural Food stores, food co-ops, and you name it, are the equivalent of Gandhi's spinning his own cloth. Otherwise, Bernie is just going to get stymied somewhere along the line, despite the fact that he's doing better than Nader did, apparently.

[@CuinnHerrick]

Great, but unfortunately I can't get past some of the idealistic thinking

[@alaakela]

Was he Epsteined?

[@vickycohn4586]

the edit of the video is just horrible. shame.

[@RuudGerrevink]

What's worse than listening to an economist about "the future"; listening to an anthropologist about "economy". Nice one-liners, but light on content. I agree that bureaucracy is a nuisance but who really expects a diminishing of bureaucracy when the population expands. "Finance is other peoples debt" So, what's the problem? Or do you mean like 'Food is another persons hunger' ? Without debt (in any shape or form) a society (even an undiscovered tribe in some jungle) cannot function. Debt in itself is not evil.

[@BarracudaBastard]

RuudGerrevink I'd venture that you could accuse any 20-minute video of being light on content, much more so for youtube comments ;) The main thing that David has to say about debt is not that it's evil, but that it is being treated (by political leaders) as a 'sacred' moral obligation, pushing aside others, arguably more secular ones and in the process narrowing political visions. With that being said, the questions you have would be best answered in his aforementioned book 'DEBT The First 5000 Years' . This might even spur some new, more exciting questions for you ;)

[@philipganchev2306]

This is a shortened video of a longer talk. It might help to clarify if you watch some longer videos of Greaber's presentations.

[@El_Rebelde_]

RuudGerrevink read his book and maybe you'd learn something.

[@politibetjent]

So you can't talk about the economy unless you're an economist?

[@siginotmylastname3969]

Roar RAP Then we're doomed xD that field would die without input from others.