There’s something to be said for utterly naive experiments like this. They tend to fail 100% of the time, but you learn things.
Also this crowd has been holier-than-thou preaching at the rest of us for a decade and I’m tired of it. Do an experiment, and put up or shut up.
Conversation
I dislike the Randians at least as much, but they do at least make foolhardy attempts to prove their theories experimentally, even if the only outcome is that they grow out of it.
2
11
The closest experiment I’m aware of is the CHAZ thing in Seattle but that was heavily distorted by the BLMish context and extremely hostile context of a major city. This experiment needs a decent sandbox.
4
10
Yes, your first order of business will be arguing among yourselves to sort out the No True Graeberland problem 🤣
100:1 odds against a group getting out of that discussion with enough coherence left to do anything.
“Real Graeberism has never been tried” is the future here.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
This wouldn’t be Graeberland! I’m graeberland you’d have bookkeeping and obligations would be governed by reciprocity (including the counts from bookkeeping!) he doesn’t simply argues for the farthest opposite of the current systems he denounced.
1
12
One must not speak ill of the dead, but from a brief, unpleasant interaction which ended with him blocking me, he was impossible to talk to when alive if you disagreed even slightly. It’s been >1 year since he died, and he’s back in zeitgeist with a posthumous book, so fair game.
2
9
My summary take:
Disliked Debt. A bad-faith sloppy polemic with 1 essay worth of insight bloated into a fat book.
The bullshit jobs phrase was clever but the argument was bad.
Did not read bureaucracy book.
Only thing I liked was his essay on play
4
3
19
Do not intend to read new book. Reviews I trust suggest it’s the same sort of shaky, melodramatic polemic that Debt was.
But I do think there is a really high burden of proof resting on those intent on elevating him to sainthood to demonstrate that his ideas have real merit.
4
1
6
Replying to
it's my opinion that alot of these merits are demonstrated via research in the new book which you do not intend to read :(
1
1
Replying to
er, if one did research historical examples, where would one publish this info? :D
not posting as a graeberite! i've read yuval harris' "sapiens" and what appealed to me about "dawn of humanity" was specifically that it integrates so much more actual research into its analysis
1
Replying to
Not historical. Graeberism is a normative political ideology that has already tried revolutionary organizing a few times. The only acceptablevtest is governance. We’re past academic demonstrations and historical revisionism here.
Replying to
too many thought-trains to fit into twitter, but a long time ago you wrote about something of an 'existential challenge' for our current younger generations, about how it might be a defining task for folks trying to make sense of a post-Weirding world.../
1


