(Source: yobaba, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
All human interactions are not forms of exchange. Only some are. Exchange encourages a particular way of conceiving human relations. This is because exchange implies equality, but it also implies separation. It’s precisely when the money changes hands, when the debt is cancelled, that equality is restored and both parties can walk away and have nothing further to do with each other.
Debt is what happens in between: when the two parties cannot yet walk away from each other, because they are not yet equal. But it is carried out in the shadow of eventual equality. Because achieving that equality, however, destroys the very reason for having a relationship, just about everything interesting happens in between. In fact, just about everything human happens in between—even if this means that all such human relations bear with them at least a tiny element of criminality, guilt, or shame.
—David Graeber, ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ (via aidsnegligee)
(via reblogging4reference)
(Source: sonofbaldwin)
(Source: rationalhub, via holdinghope)
After all, we can’t have something that is safe and uses virtually no natural resources (at least not on a continuing basis) to supply us power. Not polluting the planet seems so…un-American.
(Source: skepticalavenger)
(Source: catmartini, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
am i a grammar communist
if i think language belongs to the people, and it is everyday speakers and not the dictionary writing elite, who control the means of grammar and diction production?
(Source: , via sociolab)
Haiti and the shock doctrine
Haiti, an already very poor country, was shattered by the earthquake of January 2010 centred on the capital, Port-au-Prince. In the aftermath, a rigorous economic programme was imposed by rich-world agencies and governments that took no account of Haitians’ true needs. A forensic investigation of how this blueprint has overridden the hopes of a new generation of Haitians, by Matt Kennard.
