"One of the great mysteries, if you take the Adam Smith theory of the origin of money (that it arose from the inconveniences of barter), is, why did ancient kings want taxes at all? If gold and silver were naturally money, why not just grab the gold and silver mines directly and keep all of it? Indeed that is in fact what they did, so what’s the point of taking the gold that you already own, stamping your picture on it, handing it out and then saying, ‘OK, everybody, give it back’?"

بدهی , برده داری و ایده ما در باره/ از آزادی( قسمت اول), توسط دیوید گریبر

ZCommunications | Debt, Slavery and our Idea of Freedom (Part 1) by David Graeber | ZNet Article

www.zcommunications.org

David Graeber is a Reader of Anthropology at Goldsmith’s, London, and a left-wing political activist. His most recent book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, has just been published in the UK. It looks at the evolution of debt as both a moral and an economic concept, drawing on anthropological evidence fr...