The one on debt or on bullshit jobs? From what I know, the book on debt is indeed quite influential in financial circles, although I find that a third of its content are entertaining passages on tribal societies.
And the bullshit jobs book is a reiteration of the earlier essay. While the essay is concise and straight to the point, the book has dubious assumptions and generalisations that are there for attention-grabbing.
David Graeber would have been the greatest mind of our era if he adopted the writing style of @pg: straight to the point essays that form a cult following.
As much anti-estabilshment as he was, he was trying too much to fit his brilliant mind into XX century academia writing standards.
I have yet to read his latest book, but the reviews seem quite promising. Basically he and his co-author challenge the view that we got more intelligent over time, and they do back their conclusions with extensive references.
First off, @pg actually started Hacker News and was instrumental to its long-term success.
Second, @pg 10 years ago is not @pg today. People change, and while his latest essays many not be exceptional neither in style nor in content, texts like "What You'll Wish You'd Known" and "What You Can't Say" have been highly influential well outside SV or even US.
P.S funnily, shortly after "What You'll Wish You'd Known" I saw a viral video of Joanne Rowling saying the same thing @pg was barred from saying at a commencement address: Stay Upwind.
I do think that when someone is very successful and has a reputation, others are more likely to try to tear them down, maybe from a sense that the success or reputation is not deserved.
With the obscene income & wealth inequality that exists, thanks to our winners-take-all kind of society, there is a lot of resentment towards such people.
If Mr. Graham's essays were written by an unknown, my guess is there would be a smaller proportion of negative reactions, but also far less interest overall.
That and his posts are popular, shared here often. That's really all there is to it. Some appear to believe that writing has to reach the pinnacle of enlightenment to justify popularity.
>Debt: The first 500 years - I found it extremely interesting.
The interesting things are everything Graeber missed. Which fair, he's an anthropologist and not an economist. Interestingly, none of which really contradicts him.
When Jeff Bezos is worth billions, does he really? He doesn't have actual $, he has an abstract # derived from owning stocks in amazon. But how did you even get there? It's fundamentally debt. Every $ he is worth is the debt someone else has. Society owes him for his contribution. He created something that people love to use. Therefore he will be rewarded for that.
The caveat is that he does not get interest for this debt. He's not holding mortgages or whatever. So inflation is the mechanism in which he gets poorer. He is forgiving that debt like Graeber explains it worked in the olden days. However, he obviously is still operating and continuing to earn, so his worth goes up.
Flipside, if you are someone who holds mortgages, you earn the interest. You're not forgiving debt, so long as inflation is lower than the interest rate. Like right now, the market has bond rates well below inflation. The people holding debt are forgiving the debt. Which are often retirement funds and what have you because they are legally required to buy those.
In the USA, even the 30 year bonds are negative. Whoever holds your debt is forgiving your debt in those percentages. Other countries like Germany have negative interest rates, they have to forgive the debt even faster. Why is this? This is the time when baby boomers are retiring. Germany obviously didn't do well in WW2 and it's going to impact them more.
It has definitely changed my view on what money is and how it came to be. And how political money really is, like a king can say from now one 1 gold coin equals 11 silver coins etc. Another one is the book "And forgive them their debts" by Michael Hudson talking about ancient debt jubilee in the middle east. If i'm not mistaken one of the sources for debt: the first 5000 years book.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28908960
His passing also discussed at the time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365811