[specialist]

As suggested by its title, "Debt" is an anthropology book about the history of debt. And by extension the origins of money. Not economics.

Adam Smith and his contemporaries hypothesized that barter proceeded money. Modern economics textbooks and pundits continue to repeat this misbelief. Academics even admit the tale is often repeated as form of short hand narrative.

Charlemagne was quaint?

[unmole]

Too bad that the book about debt and how it became intertwined with our culture and morality relies on a spurious conflation of basic terms. Adam Smith wrote a whole book on The Theory of Moral Sentiments but the beliefs that Graeber choses to ascribe to him are invented whole cloth.

And for a book written by an anthropologist, the picture of China we get is a culture existentialist caricature.

> Charlemagne was quaint?

At least as quaint as Sher Shah Suri.

[specialist]

Belated followup. I reread the bits which reference and quote Adam Smith. (Revised edition.) Because maybe I'm being clueless.

Sorry, I'm just not seeing it.

FWIW, I wouldn't expect Smith to have access to reports from the New World, or even the inclination to connect the dots (play anthropolgist). So maybe you think Graeber is too harsh there. But I certainly expect Adam's academic successors to adjust as necessary.

Also FWIW, I wouldn't care so much about barter-money genesis fables, recognizing that pop-science lags academic best avail science by decades or more, were it not for the outsized influence that economic spokesmodels have on real world policy.

With that kind of assumed power, relished and hoarded, the pundits have that much more responsibility to be intellectually honest. In my future perfect world, of course.

You don't have to explain more, beating a dead horse. But I am keen to know which explanations -- what is money? where did money come from? -- you favor.