UG#576 - Is 5000 Years Enough? (Debt, Morality & Fiat Currency)
Robin Upton | 18.11.2011 18:06 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Sheffield
Then we hear from Edward Griffin on issues surrounding fiat money creation, such as central banks, inflation, the use of easy money to create the boom-bust cycle. Central banks, as we shall hear, are basically pseudo-governmental franchises which operate more or less beyond public oversight.
In our second hour, we begin reading David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years, an anthropologist's look at the topic of debt and its effects on societies throughout history. In the first chapter, On The Experience of Moral Confusion, Graeber incestigates attitudes towards debt and moneylending throughout he world and throughout recorded history. Why, though money lenders are generally so wealthy and influential in society, are they so widely reviled? Do borrowers have a moral obligation to pay back their loans? What about citizens of a country whose corrupt leader took on a fraudulent debt on their behalf? Such questions are far from simple, and his treatment of them should prove illuminating to a wide audience, from philosophers to economists to anarchists of all stripes.
Robin Upton
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