If we are at money, debt and Graber: Debt is really disorganized mess in which he just tells a lot of random and shock value anecdotes about really desperate times and places. It doesn't really make the argument he wants it to make.
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all of his books are like this, from activists ones, to on the theory of value to anthropology, it's badly organized stream of random anecdotes, when he want to do some global argument he totally fails with not being able to even formulate in an organized fashion.
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if he would proceed to do a normal anthropological comparative narrative with normal definitions, we will find out that barter-like relationships always existed with less ritualized form among the people who somewhat know each other and in more ritualized form among the strangers
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He gets into this argument, but he has only one shock value example in which people do the tobacco trade with ritualized sex with a foreign tribe, but it's close to the only story on the topic in the entire book, if I remember correctly.
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He doesn't have a coherent definition of what money even is and how he would differentiate money and debt, even while he talks about how money is a promissory note and compares it with material gold money of empires, but once again, lack of coherent argument and definitions!
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Also, I have a feeling if try to go into footnotes, they will not tell the stuff he wants them to say. I tried to check one about a guy who asked fishers for stuff and got killed for it, the name in the sources seem to be different and the story too.
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I struggled through that book because it seemed to be making deep points that I just couldn't quite get. It's been on my to-reread list and your perspective is quite helpful.
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Replying to @Pinboard
I think he needed a editor, the book would be far shorter and more competent if somebody guided him through.
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