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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

I'm a poor doctor, but my book about heart surgery deserves props for debunking the myth... You do see the problem here, don't you?

If people aren't qualified, as opposed to having credentials, to understand and comment on a subject, they should get a good co-author. Because the look at monetary policy through the ages is a very interesting one. If the authors do have an actual grip, and the ability to explain things to the layman unless we talk about dry scientific books, of the subject. If they don't it's just pseudo-science sold with confidence.

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"Debt" isn't about monetary policy, though. It's about the anthropology of money, trade, and debt. It seems to me that those aren't subjects exclusively, or even necessarily optimally, addressed by economists, who, as a different commenter (correctly) wrote* above, aren't actually interested in the history of those ideas.

* Interestingly, I think that was meant as exculpatory for economists, which is itself a bit revealing.

> Debt" isn't about monetary policy, though. It's about the anthropology of money, trade, and debt.

And it would have been fine if Debt stuck to the anthropology. But perpetuating inaccuracies about money can be actively harmful.

For example, I-series bonds are the safest instruments available to US residents to hedge against inflation. Now, in popular conception, if US treasury bonds are seen as a debt that will never be paid, people might instead put their savings into assets that are suboptimal. You already see gold shilling targeted at senior citizens which makes for a terrible investment.

What inaccuracies did he perpetuate?

That the national debt will never be "paid off" is hardly inaccurate. It's barely even controversial. It wouldn't be a good idea either.

Hell, I remember the news articles from the 90s during a brief period of budget surplus that fretted about what pension funds and insurers would do if they couldnt buy t bills any more. The mask briefly slipped as the reality of the national-debt-is-basically-just-a-savings-account before we returned to our regularly scheduled implied bankruptcy doom-mongering and budget ceiling theatrics.

Overall it's not bad that national debt is there. Because usually a nation gets something for it. And national debt is paid back, all the time. Nations don't default on their debt that often, if they do it's really, really bad.

So overall, debt isn't paid back. The particular debt is paid back very much indeed. And whatever was paid for with that debt is ideally here to stay. National debt isn't anywhere close to private debt or a mortgage. Looking at it that way is just wrong.

By no account do I understand monetary theory or how national debt works in detail. I know enough to understand that it is a very complex topic, one that isn't easily understood. So I am cautious when it comes to easy explanations.

Fair enough, but I don't think seniors who buy American Liberty Coins after watching Tucker Carlson were informed by Graeber's economic sins--whatever they may be--in "Debt". ;)

Fine, replace senior with hipster and gold with <fashionable shitcoin>.

The fact that public debt in its totality will never will be zero, doesn't mean that the tenants of that debt will not receive what they were promised.

In fact, you probably don't want the public debt to be payed.

If debt is a liability, that means that is also an asset of somebody. In the case of public debt is an asset of the private sector. A country without public debt would mean those senior citizens wouldn't have safe assets.

Also, a reduction of public debt means a lower deficit, that means less public expenses, that means, or a GDP fall or a higher private debt. Everything has to balance.

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