“Debt: the first 5000 years” is riddled with errors.
https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/the-very-last-david-g...
> That made me prick up my ears, and say that that was not so. The example I gave was Graeber's claim that the:
>> Federal Reserve… is technically not part of the government at all, but a peculiar sort of public-private hybrid, a consortium of privately owned banks whose chairman is appointed by the United States president, with Congressional approval, but which otherwise operates without public oversight…
> That is the kind of glaring error that Graeber claims he does not make.
> Of the twelve votes on the Federal Open Market Committee, seven are cast either by the Governors of the Federal Reserve--who are officers of the United States government, nominated by the President, and confirmed by the Senate--and five are cast by Federal Reserve regional bank Presidents, who take office only when approved by a majority of the Governors.
> Not one, but all twelve.
..,
> And let me give the last word to a commenter on the last:
> I don't want to get involved with him because he's so damned crazy, but I just noticed that note 19 to chapter 12, p. 451. Egads. He has no idea what he's talking about. Not understanding the Treasury bond market in a book that purports to be a major treatise on debt???... Someone should tell him that deposits are liabilities for banks
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2011_11_13.html#011751
>> But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:
> 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.
https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt...
> In other words, I am now angry at myself for paraphrasing the book, and trying to put theses into Graeber's mouth, because this is such a rambling, confused, scattershot book that I am doing you a disservice by making it seem more coherent than it really is.
https://www.annleckie.com/2013/02/24/debt/
> But Graeber is basing part of his argument on the attitude of ancient Sumerians towards prostitution (vs later attitudes), and this is his evidence for the attitude he says they had. And so the question for me is, did he not actually look at the list of mes? There are plenty of Sumerian texts that are mentioned or summarized in books but hard to find in translation, but this one, as I mention above, is easily available. So if he didn’t read the actual list of mes, he did sloppy research and I’m bound to wonder where else he skipped research he ought to have done.
> Or did he know what was on the list, and that things like destruction of cities and troubled heart and fear and terror were there (they are) but went ahead anyway because darnit he was sure he was right and how many of his readers would question it, or had ever actually seen that list? Cause it’s pretty obscure.
> Either way I can’t really trust him anymore–if he’s ignoring or eliding things in areas I know something about, surely it’s happening elsewhere in the book and I just don’t see it because how could I?