Look at labor policy. What's the point of making everybody work too much? It's not very useful. It is destroying the planet, actually. But it's great at keeping people off the streets.
David GraeberThere seems a general rule that, the more obviously oneโs work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.
David GraeberAdam Smith actually took all his best ideas and lines from sources from medieval Persia. But one thing he doesn't take is the underlying assumption they have that the basis of a market is mutual aid.
David GraeberAll societies are based on a sort of minimum level of communism. Otherwise, you couldn't have any social relations at all.
David GraeberStudent loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If thereโs a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture. There goes everything new that would pop out. And in a way, this is whatโs happened to our society. Weโre a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative and eccentric people.
David Graeber