Debt: the first 5000 years, available free. Excellent book.

[UndercoverElephant]

Most of you know that mainstream academic economics is intellectually and morally bankrupt because of its failure to acknowledge the very obvious ecological limits to growth, but did you know it is equally bankrupt regarding its own founding mythology? Adam Smith, the father of "scientific" economics, based "The Wealth of Nations" on the assumption that before money there was a "barter economy", which was really inefficient and impractical, and hence we needed money as a means of exchange. Only one problem with this theory: it's total bullshit. No real-world example of a barter economy has ever been found, and there is no evidence of one ever existing. This has been known for over 100 years, but economics students are *still* taught the bullshit. Some "science". Why does this matter? Because mainstream economics wants to justify the claim that markets should be independent of state, so has to claim they come into existence on their own. Once you admit that states create markets, the whole of economics would be forced to accept that truly free markets don't exist, and therefore governments are responsible for the way they operate. Mainstream economics is not a science. It's a cult.

If you're interested in this, there is a superb book all about it, and it is available free from the University of Warwick website as a PDF. It is called "Debt: The first 5000 years". By David Graeber.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/ ... _years.pdf

[BritDownUnder]

Worth a look especially if free. Thanks for the heads up.