Perhaps if it were one flamewar amid a bunch of on-topic, thoughtful replies, that could be called a coincidence, but in this case it's painfully clear that your comment set off the whole thing. Please don't ever do anything like this on HN again.
Edit: I think I could have modulated this comment a bit better. Sorry! More downthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776445.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Edit: really? There's a whole other thread making these exact same points that didn't get flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761847
(Btw, I've partly answered your other questions in a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27776445)
Here are some principles that have emerged over the years here, as supports for the kind of discussion we're hoping for:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Intent doesn't communicate itself on the internet, so the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
The value of a comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms the root of. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Trolling can only be measured by effects, not intent. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Scorched earth is not interesting. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> Trolling can only be measured by effects, not intent.
While I hope that principal helps you do your job, I also hope I never encounter it anywhere else. It's a free backdoor to deplatform anyone at anytime. Brigade the discussion and suddenly they're the troll. Yikes.
If such brigading occurs, obviously that trumps the other principle and needs to be dealt with strictly.
> permanent debt peonage
> the temerity not only to rise up in rebellion, amidst grand declarations of universal rights and freedoms
...all seem like ideological rhetoric, and barely "facts".
See, I read that in a sarcastic "how dare they" tone. Maybe that's why I don't think it's controversial.
> But debt is not just victor's justice; it can also be a way of punishing winners who weren't supposed to win.
Are you saying the debt/embargoes weren't meant to be punitive? "Weren't supposed to win" being the prevailing attitude of global economic powers of the time.
Please ban me from the orange hellsite so that I'm never tempted on commenting something ever again, while you reflect on why you're defending such garbage people
Yes, commenters do bear some responsibility for the subthreads that come from their comments. These things are pretty predictable, after all. (To be fair, I probably came down on cryptohacks a little too harshly—it's an occupational hazard, especially after hours of cleaning up shit—sorry, cryptohacks. But the principles hold good.)
I don't agree that it's cowardice to go for substantive discussion rather than people screaming at each other and losing their minds off-topically. I'd say it takes some courage to do that. What strikes me as closer to cowardice (not the best way to put it, but we'll go with your word) is defining one side of these bloodbaths-in-a-teacup as virtuous and the other side as "garbage people", instead of facing the truth that they are co-creations.
Btw, I like Graeber. I personally protected his account on HN and made sure he got to say everything he wanted to here. I think his death was a loss for intellectual life—he may not have been a meticulous scholar but his creativity is not the sort of thing that comes along very often. I think making a big deal out of that one lame sentence about Apple is an example of the stupidest sort of internet battle. At the same time, of course he was an ideological writer and of course that paragraph is ideological rhetoric. That it also contains facts doesn't change that; that's what good rhetoricians do.
Nor is there anything wrong with that paragraph in its original context in a book—a genre where the volume knob needs to be turned up quite a bit at times, and generally wielded with a lot of variation. But McLuhan got it right, the medium is the message, and copy-pasting that paragraph into an internet thread on an inflammatory topic is definitely flamebait. We're trying to learn how to avoid that here because the threads it produces are repetitive, and therefore tedious, and therefore turn nasty. That's really all I'm saying—anything else people are adding onto it (such as secret political agendas, positions on Haitian history, or whatever) is imaginary.
Also, of the first leader of “liberated” Haiti, Dessalines:
“Dessalines marched into Port-au-Prince, where he was welcomed as a hero by the 100 whites who had chosen to stay behind. Dessalines thanked them all for their kindness and belief in racial equality, but then he said that the French had treated him as less than human when he was a slave, and so to avenge his mistreatment, he promptly had the 100 whites all hanged.”
Off to a great start…
You also have a history of posting flamebait to HN. Please review the site guidelines and take a lot more care with this place. The ecosystem here is fragile. I'm sure you wouldn't drop lit matches in a dry forest or at a gas station, or toss Molotov cocktails into crowds at parks. So please don't do the equivalent here.
How does that sound to you?
I made no such claim. Also "founding myth" is a term with a distinct meaning separate from "mythology" in that it is not necessarily untrue - romanticizing the truth and excluding any unflattering details is usually enough.
I really wish more people read biographies, especially by multiple people who where belligerents in the same conflict. When you hear the same story told from different perspectives, you begin to question if the history your were taught was in fact, the objective "reality".
What you called "reality" was just a perspective from a single point of view, which I can safely assume was European.
One of my high school history classes presented this view; we used A People's History of the United States as a textbook.
What role did France play in the Boston Tea Party? I'm not aware of any at all. Certainly France jumped in once they saw the opportunity happening, but the idea that the revolution was really part of the conflict with France is just wrong.
The "American" studies class was about the Constitution, various laws, major Lobbying groups (ACLU, NAACP, FOP, NRA), how primaries work, etc. etc. American history was left to grade school.
Without France as a belligerent to England in the years up to the war, the latter would have been far better equipped to defend the colonies.
The David versus Goliath mythology that tells of feisty upstart democratic republic felling the great monarchy taught in school typically doesn't get into a Great Britain heavily depleted and indebted from years of war with France.
The irony from the US perspective is we're taught the superior force was defeated by guerilla tactics and unconventional warfare. Then we completely forgot that when we went to Vietnam. Oops.
Kinda odd you left that part out...
After all, the West still doesn't really care about slavery - there's more slaves today than ever in history. They also do not care about benefitting from slave labour or they would boycott the top countries in the Global Slavery Index: https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc... Slavery continues to be a thriving industry in Africa and the Middle East for example, and for the most part concern about this only comes from a few Western NGOs.
It largely seems to be a matter that at some point became politically useful in the US and elsewhere, rather than an actual concern. I wonder if it will ever stop being in political vogue.
It's diabolical. The ruling class, who benefitted the most from slavery, have figured out how to use it to keep people from uniting against them. According to them, it was white people who enslaved black people, not rich people who enslaved poor people, and we should all be upset the former and never think about the latter.
Being forced to work 8-12 hours a day, but free to go about your business the rest of the time is a very different scenario to being owned and having your offspring becoming another persons property.
Chattel slavery goes way beyond forced labor - both are terrible, but not equally so.
“The revolution ended slavery in Saint-Domingue but not forced labor. Louverture and several of the early governments of independent Haiti used the army to impose forced work on the plantations”
nonetheless I'm disappointed; the assertion looked so juicy and worthy of a deep dive. you made it sound like "academia" was conspiring to demote slavery to forced labor under specific conditions. yet no evidence of this is to be found in the linked text.
rather, the summary makes a point of distinguishing slavery from forced labor. granted, it doesn't define either term (as a proper paper would) but it doesn't pretend they are interchangeable either.
Dessalines went around the county killing all (fully white) French males. A lot of powerful Haitians opposed this, especially those of mixed racial background who had white family. The crimes that followed were really pushed forward by Dessalines the man, not the Haitian people in general.
Transatlantic slavery was incredibly cruel, but persecution by "the French" doesn't excuse a genocide of all French people on the island. Ironically, the people most responsible for the crimes against enslaved Africans (the "grand blanc") were largely back in France and so escaped personal harm.
"A contingent of Polish defectors were given amnesty and granted Haitian citizenship for their renouncement of French allegiance and support of Haitian independence."
Update: I generally agree with your revised point, but for the sake of history I believe it's important not to needlessly exaggerate historical events. Let the events themselves stand on their own. My country has an ongoing problem with propagating accurate history, so I am aware of the need to get things correct.
>Philippe Girard writes "when the genocide was over, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent."
That seems pretty in-line with what OP stated, I'm not familiar enough to know if Philippe Girard is a reliable source but the reference seems legitimate.[1]
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0031322050010619...
This is not what this site is for. No more of this please.
It's not at all surprising that this made the flamewar worse—a neutral observer would expect precisely that, and that means you're responsible for the effects, whether you intended them or not. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
If you don't see how that's the case, I can understand why you might feel like a victim, but such perceptions have a lot of cognitive bias in them. It's hard for people (I mean all of us) to see the provocations contained in our own comments, and all too easy to see the negative contributions of others. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
As for downvoted comments, which ones are you talking about specifically? When users do the kind of thing you're describing, we often remove downvoting rights from them. I didn't see it when I took a quick look, though.
The article says "By the end of April 1804, some 3,000 to 5,000 people had been killed and the white Haitians were practically eradicated, excluding a select group of whites who were given amnesty.". Someone else posted a link to an academic article that states that former slaves "eradicated Haiti's white population in 1804".
Pointing out that a few polish troops were spared in order to try to discredit me and my summary of the article that all the white population was massacred (which is accurate on the whole and not a "drive-by one-liner") is a nitpick to prevent discussion, and it worked.
It's disappointing that you're siding with that behaviour and that you're accusing me of flamewar, or even of provocation. That's a sad testament to how much the scope of possible discussion has narrowed. As mentioned, I really only posted it for historical purposes on the messy past, and present, of Haiti as part of, I thought, a mature discussion. I didn't even think that this was an inflammatory topic, and in fact I still don't that's why I'm very unpleasantly surprised.
> As for downvoted comments, which ones are you talking about specifically?
All my comments that were downvotable (so less than 24h old, no matter what discussion) were downvoted in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, some time after I posted the comments in this thread.
Using World War 2 as an example, the Army Air Forces immolated Japanese cities with white phosphorus and napalm before the atomic bomb was available. In Tokyo alone, hundreds of thousands of people were reduced to ash, and the glow of the firestorm was visible from hundreds of miles away. Those actions, followed by the atomic bombing, are marginally controversial today but largely accepted as “ok”.
Because the allies won, those actions are rationalized, and those rationalizations have merit. Had Japan won, events like the rape of Nanking would have been rationalized by their standards, and actions of the US Army Air Forces would have been viewed very differently.
With respect to Haiti, the colonialist mindset focuses on the individual tragedy of slaughtered Europeans living their life in the colony. But from the perspective of the rebel slaves, those individuals were complicit in systematic barbarous conditions in the cane fields that killed thousands of slaves horribly, every month for a century or more. The wife of the banker who financed or leased slaves is the same as the overseer. Those rebels won the battle, but ultimately did not win the war nor write the history.
War by its nature breaks the norms of morality and civilized behavior. When Lincoln called for Americans to embrace the “better angels of our nature”, he did so knowing that war is where you break the glass and do whatever is necessary to prevail.
With respect to civilian victims of war, that’s just reality.
Post US Civil War military doctrine is that the whole of a mobilized society is part of the war effort. That’s why Sherman burned everything in his March to the sea. That’s why the meat grinder of WW1 continued until German society collapsed. That’s why open bombardment of cities was the WW2 norm. The era of field armies duking it out for king and country died with Napoleon.
We can argue about definition or scope of genocide is. But I think at the end of the day the tragedy of Haiti from 1493 on speaks for itself, and looking for good guys and bad guys is a waste of time. I’m naive, but I think Lincoln’s appeal is more relevant than ever, and doing the hard work of settling differences without warfare is how we all improve.
What's the difference when the target is the civilian population, as was the case with the bombings of Japan (and many of the cities in the European theatre of the war as well)? Other than the fact bombing cities from a B-29 flying high is more impersonal for the perpetrators.
" In January 1945, General Curtis LeMay arrived in the Mariana Islands to take over the problem-plagued B-29 command. For two months, his crews flew similar high-altitude missions over Japan with little more success. His job on the line, General LeMay decided on a risky new strategy: his pilots would fly daring, dangerous bombing missions at altitudes as low as 5,000 feet, low enough to be within range of anti-aircraft weapons. Robert Rodenhouse was shocked:
"We thought they could throw the kitchen sink up there and hit us. Can you imagine flying a big four-engine bomber at 5,000 feet? Why that was just unheard of, absolutely unheard of. And like my crew says, I think those generals lost their marbles. They weren't thinking straight."
The low-altitude bombing runs turned out to be highly successful. The planes carried much larger bomb loads. Crews flew at night to avoid enemy fighters. And flight personnel were kept to a minimum. Most of the gunners were removed to make room for still more bombs -- incendiary bombs."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pacific...
They didn't claim only the Allies engaged in this behavior, nor that Japan was blameless. Their claim was in the first sentence, and let me quote it verbatim:
> "That type of behavior is a consequence of war. It happens, and the victors define who is worthy of punishment or praise."
And it goes on to elaborate:
> "Because the allies won, those actions are rationalized, and those rationalizations have merit. Had Japan won, events like the rape of Nanking would have been rationalized by their standards, and actions of the US Army Air Forces would have been viewed very differently."
To spell it out, the argument is that it's silly to single out the Haitians when they murdered their oppressors (and people in the same social caste as their oppressors), because this kind of stuff tends to happen in war regardless of who the involved parties are. Western powers engage in it in their own wars and conflicts, it's just that since they are usually considered the victors, this behavior is less often singled out as barbarous (it is, but less often). Conversely, nobody identifies the former Haitian slaves as part of a victorious West -- especially since Haiti is a failed state and decidedly not part of "us" -- and therefore it's easier to single them out as barbarous and genocidal.
Things not claimed in the other post:
- That Japan wasn't guilty of similar crimes.
- That it was just Allied behavior.
- That the US was worse than Japan or viceversa.How else would you deal with an enemy that would not give in? Most people fail to understand that the axis was all in, in every way, shape and form. When it comes to the Japanese, they flat out were not going to give up. Their will had to be broken, somehow, someway.
> “the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.”
- Plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy
> In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Truman’s political advisers overruled the military in determining how the end of the war with Japan would be approached.
> "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan"
- Truman's chief of staff
> “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”
- Commanding general of the US Army Air Forces
> “[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior…[and thought] that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.”
- Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, talking about Secretary of State James Byrnes
It doesn't seem like dropping the bombs served any military purpose.
The military capability being broken was not the goal, and it also not what decided the war.
> made little impact on the Japanese military
That would matter if the goal of the bomb or impact had been about 'material' but it wasn't, and its not how the war was decided.
> the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air
Again, that doesn't matter. Their position was hopeless literally the second they started the war. They literally started the war knowing they couldn't win.
The bomb was not there for military impact as militarily japan had already been beaten along every possible measure of such things. Japan was surrounded, had no food import its navy and air force were done.
> It doesn't seem like dropping the bombs served any military purpose.
The military purpose was ending the war. And in fact it did exactly that. You can actually go read about the highest level of Japan decision making. This is well researched now. Not a single member of the high highest decision council was for ending the war or even negotiation. Literally nobody. Despite starvation, fire bombings and military defeat.
After first bomb fell the they were starting to have meeting where they discussed the situation and the waste majority of them still were absolutely against ending the war.
After the second bomb the mood shifted, multiple members changed there position and with support from the emperor managed to overrule the still considerable opposition to peace from many of the military leaders.
The idea that this would have been possible without the bomb is simply not historical. Some people claim the Soviet invasion was the deciding factor, but just like losing territory to the East and South, losing territory in the West would not have changed them.
Here are the alternative options:
- Surround Japan for extended period of time
- Full invasion of Japan
The first option would have been essentially a 10+ year genocide of much of Japans population and transforming it back into an agricultural society. The government would simply not have given up, they knew about the starvation that would happen in Japan and they were perfectly willing to endure that.
The second would have cost the US 10s to 100s of men, and the Japanese likely 10x as much.
There were 1000s of civilians suicides even in some of the outer islands, and 10-100s of soldiers who essentially committed suicide by attack. What do you think would happen when a US army went from village to village, city by city threw Japan following a retreating Japanese army and government north right across all of Japan.
The Japanese army was willing to turn every city int Stalingrad. Endless bonsi charges where US soldiers would have to basically mass execute 1000s of Japanese soldiers who had run out of ammo.
So what would your solution have been?
Assuming this figure in today's money - we have a country of more than 10 million people who can't afford to pay 18 Billion, and we have at least two individuals who are worth at least 10 times that amount (at least on paper)!!
Yes, I am aware it is a weird and useless comparison. Still, it is kinda astonishing.
Perhaps, but credit markets also provide critical benefit. 500 pages of such a singleminded dismissal of nuance was too much for me.
It wouldn't have 500 pages if it was just "debt = slavery" :p
While there are sometimes good historical nuggets, it mostly concerns itself with interpreting ever possible situation in the last 5000 years according to Graebers ideology and confirming that it is correct while constantly claiming anybody else that worked on these same topics and didn't share his interpretations are idiots (while often not actually seeming to know what they actually wrote).
This is just state policy if they don't like other states. Its just legal justification for states to do what they want to do. States have found a billion way to justify hostile action against other states. Claiming reparations of one kind or another is very common for a very long time.
Even had they been able to pay that money, its very questionable if that would have changed the disposition of the other stats towards it. Cartage managed to pay Rome back in full, and Rome then decide to destroy it anyway.
They might just have a different excuse for the same policy.
>Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other's garages.
That's an impressive amount of wrong to pack into one sentence! So much wrong, that I would not trust anything based on Graeber's word.
> After the Haitians gained independence from French colonial rule in the Haitian Revolution of 1804, the French returned in 1825 and demanded that the newly independent country pay the French government and French slaveholders the modern equivalent of US$21 billion for the theft of the slaveowner's property and the land that they had turned into profitable sugar and coffee-producing plantations.
> Haiti’s legacy of debt began shortly after a widespread slave revolt against the French, with Haitians gaining their independence from France in 1804. President of the United States Thomas Jefferson – fearing that slaves gaining their independence would spread to the United States – stopped sending aid that began under his predecessor John Adams and pursued international isolation of Haiti during his tenure. France had also pursued a policy that prevented Haiti from participating in trade in the Atlantic. This isolation on the international stage made Haiti desperate for economic relief.
First, it's odd how such a garbled sentence managed to be perfectly understandable English. If it was garbled, what was the original intention? I don't know of any major tech company founded in SV in the 1980s by ex-IBM engineers who were mostly Republican. I can't recall any famous company or organization that was known for forming democratic circles of 20-40 people with laptops in garages (regardless of the decade). Any sort of elaboration or clarification on the intended meaning would have gone a long way toward convincing me. The original sentence is simply too coherent to be "garbled" without further elaboration.
Second, book drafts are read and reread by teams of professional editors. Excerpts are circulated among colleagues and domain experts. It is practically impossible that such a "garbled" sentence could sneak by all of them.
I agree that DeLong behaved despicably, but Graeber can't be trusted.
Edit: I've tracked down previous excuses by Graeber. Initially, he blamed incorrect information from an unpublished study by a student of the Marxist economist Richard Wolff. Annoyingly the Twitter thread is totally broken, but individual tweets are still there:
https://twitter.com/chumpchanger/status/141218501024157696 "David Graeber,Debt,p96: Apple was founded by engineers from IBM who formed little democratic circles of 20-40 with laptops in garages.-HUH?!"
https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/141581278880346112 "yeah I know I think Wolff was just kind of wrong about a lot of this; I tried to check with him but he didn't answer the email"
https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/141536818398113792 "no I mean Richard Wolff the Marxist economist whose student did a study of the origins of Apple and never published it"
Around six months later he blames a copyeditor[1]:
> The endlessly cited Apple quote was not supposed to be about Apple. Actually it was about a whole of series of other tiny start-ups created by people who’d dropped out of IBM, Apple, and similar behemoths. (Of them it’s perfectly true.) The passage got horribly garbled at some point into something incoherent, I still can’t completely figure out how, was patched back together by the copyeditor into something that made logical sense but was obviously factually wrong. I should have caught it at the proofreading stage but I didn’t.
Good luck trying to track down the startups that Graeber says he was referencing, or the report that he claims he got the information from. The much more likely explanation is that he wrote some nonsense, got called on it, and refused to own up to his mistake.
1. https://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/02/seminar-on-debt-the-fir...
Are you making a larger point?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
I disagree.
I have no doubt written things that are wrong, including things that are very wrong. But I very much doubt that I have ever packed that amount of wrongness into one sentence.
The basic idea of the book is very old and not original. Social science and philosophy has been arguing about the definition/meaning/origin of debt, money, property right for a long time. He takes a very clear position on it that is clearly based in his ideological believes and then does a running narration of 5000 years of history that all proves his point crossing every social science in the process.
From my perspective as somebody that knows economics, its blatantly clear that he has no respect for economist and has not bothered with history of economic thought beyond finding a few quotes to slander. At the same time its totally clear he has never seriously read the works he seems to despise. It seems that it is his serious believe that economist and apparently the whole history of economics is simply justification for imperialism and slavery.
Not to mention that he is incredibly rude and response with personal attack when people point out that he made some very basic factual errors.
Some of his claims are so incredibly wrong that even somebody who only did the simplest online '101 History of Economic Thought' should not make.
Let me give you an example. Consider this text:
> Voluntary as well as compulsory unilateral transfers of assets (that is, transfers arising neither from a ‘reciprocal contract’ in general nor from an exchange transaction in particular, although occasionally based on tacitly recognized reciprocity), are among the oldest forms of human relationships as far as we can go back in the history of man’s economizing. Long before the exchange of goods appears in history, or becomes of more than negligible importance…we already find a variety of unilateral transfers: voluntary gifts and gifts made more or less under compulsion, compulsory contributions, damages or fines, compensation for killing someone, unilateral transfers within families, etc.*
This was written by an economist in 1892 who according to Graeber only improved on Adam Smith work "by adding various mathematical equations".
The text above was from Carl Menger, one of the most well known economist of the century and one of the founders of modern economics. Not just that, even on that wrote precisely on many of the questions Graeber book addresses. So exactly the kind of person Graeber seems to be wanting to debate and dismiss. The perfect pillar of modern (as in Post-Marginal) economics to shoot down.
Why then would Graeber claim that he only "adding various mathematical equations"? I seems that the only explanation is that he look up the wrong person on wikipedia, as there is another person with the same name who was a mathematician. Nobody who read even an introduction to modern history of economic thought would make that mistake.
He clearly doesn't have a clue who Carl Menger was and clearly has hasn't read his works. He clearly didn't actually study history of economic thought when writing his book. Rather he had preconceived notion and all he needed was a few selective Adam Smith references and dismiss the rest.
At the same time he proudly reference the 1925 'The Gift', to prove how much smarter anthropologists are as they understood the importance of the Gift economy. Compared to economist who according to him only believe in the "Mythical Land of Barter".
He speaks with equal authority about some almost unknown tribal societies, 5000 year old city states that we only have very basic data on and 2000s century politics and modern central banking (that he has borderline no understanding off). Given his very clear and explicit bias and he evident willingness to do selective reading and misinterpretation I much rather read on these topics from actual experts without such a clear bias and explicit political message.
Beyond that, I don't see how the Carl Menger quote you cited is proof that economists have a robust understanding of gift economies - and indeed it really doesn't.
Graeber is correct that mainstream economics pretty much only cares about market economies, and he is correct that modern economics is a highly ideological discipline where schools that did not align with imperialism.
Now, does Graeber overstate his claims? Perhaps. Is he wrong on the history of economics? Yes, though I can tell you I never heard of Carl Menger by name until I already had a pretty solid understanding of marginal utility theory.
Most importantly, is that a solid argument against the core thesis of the book? No. And yes, economics as a discipline is incredibly politically charged and has very poor predictive ability, assumes way too much, and is largely unaware of its issues.
> Beyond that, I don't see how the Carl Menger quote you cited is proof that economists have a robust understanding of gift economies - and indeed it really doesn't.
Its not the primary study of economists and not what they are primarily interested in and there is nothing wrong with that. Its also just one example, you can find other references to such things from Smith on.
However, Graeber consistent accusation is that economists had no understanding of its existence and therefore they are fundamentally wrong everything as the whole discipline is built on false foundation.
In fact, I would argue Graeber critic is basically built on a moral judgment. He seems to be unable to accept that even while knowing of these things, people would not consider it very relevant. Because for him it lays the foundation for everything about how the world today SHOULD work.
> Graeber is correct that mainstream economics pretty much only cares about market economies
This is pretty clearly wrong. You can go back to even Adam Smith, if you look at his 2 relevant books, one is pretty clearly not about market economics.
Economists have pretty much always been interested in institutions as well. In fact, when the discipline started 'Political Economy' was the term and that included a mix of economics and political science.
And even after those were split, Political Economy, Economics&Law, Institutional Economics and other were all still within the discipline. Now of course if you simple define 'mainstream' as excluding all of that is just an incredibly narrow definition and view of economics.
But of course if we accept that the definition of discipline as an explicit critic then I not sure what the counter argument is. Its basically just saying "I don't like what these people do because I think markets are evil, therefore if you study them you are evil.
> and he is correct that modern economics is a highly ideological discipline where schools that did not align with imperialism
I disagree that its highly ideological. This is of course hard to measure. However if we just look at political divide you will see that inside of economics you have people from all over the political spectrum while some other social disciplines are far more left, some almost exclusively so.
Honestly common from people like Graeber, the accusation of other disciplines being ideological is highly unconvincing.
I'm not sure what the second part of sentence means? Are you trying to say people who were against imperialism got removed from economics? Because that would be very wrong.
> Yes, though I can tell you I never heard of Carl Menger by name until I already had a pretty solid understanding of marginal utility theory.
Its pretty much universally accepted that there were 3 economists who lead the marginal revolution in economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility#Marginal_Revo...
- William Stanley Jevons
- Carl Menger
- Marie-Esprit-Léon Walras
They are mentioned in any history of economic thought class.
I understand that in general economics education doesn't put much interest in history of economic thought and so I do not fault people for not knowing. It is only surprising in one who implies he is an expert in history of economic thought and seeks to fundamentally critic it.
> Most importantly, is that a solid argument against the core thesis of the book? No. And yes, economics as a discipline is incredibly politically charged and has very poor predictive ability, assumes way too much, and is largely unaware of its issues.
Anthropology is less politically charged because most people are not interested in it and they don't try to make any predictions. Nor are they asked to make accurate predictions years in advanced in a world of 8 billion people.
I would argue the attack against economics as a social science is incredibly unfair, no social science in the complex real world can accurately predict, even if you assume perfect models, you wouldn't have the access to the needed data in real time.
There is a large difference between economics as a discipline and the reality that social scientists (most often economist) have been used by states and are forced to come up with recommendation. Jet somehow in economics such mistakes are seen as a reflection of economics as discipline itself.
Saying things like economist as displine failed to predict 2008 is about as useful as saying sociologist failed to predict the opcode epidemic. You can argue that Political Scientists failed to predict the Arab Spring. And we can play these games for all disciplines. Now you can likely go back and find individuals working in these discipline pointing at warning signs but that's not the same thing.
You seem to follow the popular outside economics view of economics where they as dispine are all totally arrogant and fundamentally un-reflective, rather then what most actual economists actually write and believe in.
I really just pointed at one example of a problem in the book. The book also ignores a whole bunch of very important questions that are very relevant in order to tell a very tight narrative about the things he wants to talk about. Most of all his conclusion about how these 'facts' should inform the world today.
One consistent problem I've had trying to take in criticism of the book (and I have looked for it!) is that it rarely seems to have been written by people who read the same book I did. It's bizarre.
First, the lengthy slog through ancient African societies which then suddenly ~lands at very on-the-nose messaging and what feels like the “real point” or basically a total revamp of the book’s themes up to that point. But this occurs when you’re already pretty deep into the book.
Second, If I had to guess, and I don’t say this with snark, the Book’s timing is another factor. There’s this sense that a bait and switch occurred where an interesting, nuanced book in the post ‘08 era is started in good faith, and an Occupy WS diatribe suddenly shows up halfway through.
Fair - the author was very involved in Occupy, so sure buyer beware. But it was published at a time when many of the book’s readers, and the US at large, had had it with Occupy and it’s themes. But, readers still tried to make an effort to absorb ideas from that side of the house, as ‘11-12 was no economic Cakewalk. Regardless, that honest effort lands squarely back in Occupy territory, but it took 200 pages to get there.
And it is incredibly unannounced because that is very clearly his view.
It wouldn't have 500 pages if it was just "debt = slavery" :p
Longer-form criticism I've read of it tends to exhibit similar, if less egregious, problems with reading comprehension. Which is frustrating because I suspect the book actually does have issues and oversights that would be nice to read about from a person with the right background who actually closely read & understood the book.
[0] I do have my suspicions about what kind of economic/political writing these folks are used to reading, that's (evidently) conditioned them not to expect anything resembling a sincere and thorough attempt to address problems with an assertion or argument to follow close on the heels of same assertion or argument, so may incline them toward skipping ahead or skimming heavily on reading something they immediately think of an objection to....
I agree the sentence is a small one. The author's reaction however only succeeds in drawing even more attention to it.
I'd be much more interested in criticism that addresses the core ideas, evidence, and arguments of the book, or that illustrate a pattern of presenting incorrect information, especially if it's left that way once it's made known, or if it's something the arguments presented by the book hinge on. Bringing this one bit up over and over and over doesn't really prove anything, and isn't helpful.
let's also make sure not to miss the misdirectional, identity-based non sequitur, focusing exclusively on a few colonizing europeans and a singular incident over the shackled lives of millions of slaves and their prolonged casualties over literal centuries. with one being the consequence of the other, no less.
To calrify (reagrding comments) I'm not saying this is noble deed but I would not judge them with ordinary moral standards.
If we are to reinterpret France's wrongs in light of modern norms, why not too interpret the wrong of the Haitian's? Why is this "rules for thee?"
The greater picture is this: Haitians were slaves and had every right to fight against their oppression. The "white Europeans" belonged back home in France. They brought it on themselves.
I always like to use this thought experiment: which of the two sides had power to change the situation?
The Haitians couldn't help being slaves until they rebelled. The French could from the very start choose not to be slavers.
Details matter.
It does matter if they were brought as slaves and against their will, and made by force to call Haiti their home. I hope you see the difference between this and the children the settlers brought with them. Comparing children to slavery is nonsense.
I was not making any statements on settler colonialism which is a separate issue entirely. I was just saying, the French cannot claim be victims when they were the ones engaging in slavery.
Actually Europeans did the same in not so long ago, not as slaves, but as slavers (or some more fancy words), so people can go down much further IMHO.
Sure, and the Soviets claimed the Katyn massacre was perpetrated by the Nazis.
Consider sprinkling a few grains of salt on contemporary accounts by interested parties.
(Of course, this too is a crass generalization.)
Could you imagine Germany sending a bill for the total cost of WW2 to the newly created Country of Israel?
If only there was some way of searching for this information so you don't have to rely on shitty gut feelings
> According to the Yalta Conference, no reparations to Allied countries would be paid in money. Instead much of the value transferred consisted of German industrial assets as well as forced labour to the Allies.
> Later the Western Allies softened their stance in favour of the Marshall Plan, while Eastern Germany continued to deliver industrial goods and raw materials to the Soviet Union until 1953
It was.
So they may not have a crippling financial debt, but the loss wasn’t “free”.
And they of course never paid for the utter deforestation they forced on much of Eastern Europe.
And this debt payment was not the reason for WW2. By the time Hitler came to power Versailles was a dead document. The financial terms had been revised multiple times and in those negotiations Germany got a pretty good deal and a number of additional benefits and access to a gigantic amount of US loans and trade deals.
And after WW2 Germany still had to pay some debt but because of financial restructuring after WW2 those were not as large. Part of why this was possible however was because the US actually promised a great deal to nations who accepted debt restructuring. Including economic and military aid, and trade deals.
You've also been posting mostly unsubstantive comments in general lately. Would you please fix this? We're hoping for better than that here.
You're really tempting fate twice here :))
But that story about Haiti's debt can be found in better sources.
1: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/on-april-fools-day-we-reme...