Today’s links
Finance caused the fall of Rome: A politics of protecting contracts and property is a civilizational suicide pact.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
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Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading
Finance caused the fall of Rome (permalink)
It’s hard to overstate the impact that David Graeber’s 2012 blockbuster Debt: The First Five Thousand Years had on society; it’s a truly magesterial history of the way that debt – and debt forgiveness – played in the establishment of advanced civilization and its downfall:
Graeber – a key Occupy activist who helped coin “We are the 99%” – drew heavily on the scholarship of Michael Hudson, an economic historian, who led a team of Harvard assyriologists, Egyptologists and archaeologists in a major project exploring the role of debt in antiquity.
Core to Hudson and Graeber’s work is the recognition that societies can be divided