Debt

by David Graeber

  38. True, as I showed in chapter 5, economic life will always be a matter of clashing principles, and thus might be said to be incoherent to a certain extent. Actually I don’t think this is in any way a bad thing—at the very least, it’s endlessly productive. The distortions born of violence strike me as uniquely insidious.

  39. von Mises 1949:540–41. The original German text was published in 1940 and presumably composed a year or two previous.

  40. Ferguson 2007:iv.

  41. I can speak with some authority here since I was myself born of humble origins and have advanced myself in life almost exclusively through my own incessant labors. I am well known by my friends to be a workaholic—to their often justifiable annoyance. I am therefore keenly aware that such behavior is at best slightly pathological, and certainly in no sense makes one a better person.

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