(Originally appeared on Alt-M on December 30, 2015) *** In this past summer’s controversy over whether Alexander Hamilton’s image should be replaced on the $10 bill, outraged commentators made many extravagant claims on behalf of Hamilton’s wisdom in matters of money and banking policy. For example, Ben…
After I published my recent post on "The Myth of the Myth of Barter," I tweeted the link to it to David Graeber himself, as I thought his response might be interesting. Was it ever! Before you could say Jack Robinson, Graeber let loose a fusillade of…
So far as some people are concerned, when it comes to bashing economists, any old stick will do. That, at least, seems to be true of those anthropologists and fellow-travelers who imagine that, in demonstrating that certain forms of credit must be older than either monetary exchange…