Re: "Highlighting the current wars—many of which are over rare earth minerals—he historicises the links between the military-industrial complex, Big Tech and capitalism, and the ways in which these powers maintain their hold on power."
I have just tuned in, so not sure this will be addressed or not....but "the military industrial complex" goes so much further back than most recognize.
David Graeber takes us to his investigation of the history of coins and money and their connection to militarism.
So, we cannot separate the ways that we think about money and how that is done from the efforts to end war. How do we expect to stop the empire when we are ALL going along with the notion that The State "creates/issues the currency" even before Any taxes are collected? Then The State gets to choose what nefarious activity it wants labor and materials for and "pays" for that with the money it 'created' and then tells the fools going along with this that they have to pay their taxes in the form of the issuance. But since no one else can 'create the currency', and The State's currency is "legal tender" vast numbers of the populace end up in support of the very empire they despise. Most all are going along with this.
One cannot expect to stop the abuse while going along with the very operating system of control and capture of the very labor necessary to dole out the abuse.
Now every country is using this 'operating system' for control of the populace within its borders (as if that is not bad enough!) ...trouble is that the fighting between countries is so illiterate that countries are going to war over nonsense conceptual make believe!
We are killing each other over monetary illiteracy!
We must all bring up the question of Money As A System and its effect on the social order. When empires rise and fall within this ill-conceived system we seem unable to stop "the bad guys." But what if the bad guys' agenda is only facilitated by the way we collectively conceive of and then do money itself?
Here is a conversation with the IA, Grok, that addresses the question:
As you follow the presentation using the AI Grok you will see that the instructions given to the AI, to take advantage of the programming of the AI to be able to follow logical and provable analytical rigor, means that the AI itself concludes that ALL the so called 'higher ups' are proved to be full of nonsense, by the very AI they so highly tout!
I know it is hard for people to think that money itself is conceived of wrongly and has been so for centuries. At one time and for a very long time the whole world was wrong about the earth as the center of the solar system. And ALL of the world's "experts" were also wrong despite the consensus. Now we think that money itself is the center of economics. But money is NOT a natural resource. It is a human construct. And if its conceptual base is wrong, then the entirety of the system based on that is wrong as well.
The trouble with assigning blame to those "who put us into this mess" is that it fails to put the responsibility to correct this mess on us. It is not ever going to be the case that 'the bad guys' see the light and feel guilty and decide to change their ways. The thing is that until 'the bad guys' are also known to be 'the village idiots' they will hold a level of credibility and 'authority' that no populace should be stupid enough to accept.
So, 'the blame game' also misses the focus about 'What' is running as opposed to 'who' is running it.
The 'imposed illiteracy' that surrounds money itself cannot be cured by holding the actors in this melodrama accountable for their actions within the illiterate paradigm. You see, one first has to think of, or be forced at gunpoint to accept, that money is an item of value that can also perform the function of 'unit measure of value.' But those two are mutually exclusive. The function called 'measure' is not sensible or reliable if the unit is constantly in flux and self-referential. That is the core illiteracy about money in the 'educated' class.
The imposition of a preferred 'trade good' in more modern times may have come first, in older times, by confusing a fungible commodity with its ability to perform the function of measure. If that was the core fundamental error in thinking then correcting that then dismisses the legitimacy of imposing the preferred trade good into the societal realm of measurement.
When the 'coin of the realm' (now expanded to 'the world's reserve currency) was imposed the intent was to capture labor and resources for the nefarious intent of the imperialist. That imperialist not only does not have the power to impose such on the populace or other nations if they do not accept it....but the reason to not accept this false claim of authority is that the imperialist attempting this can clearly be shown to be illiterate about the function of measure and the abstract representation of value when using a unit based system of representation and record keeping.
We cannot keep accepting self-declared 'authority' on the part of the "issuer" of the numbers we use to do the bookkeeping about our own activity. Nor can we accept that the numbers on the ledger (or the coins of the realm that came before) are items of value all by themselves.
Yet, most all are going along with this.
Money is not a resource at all. That is the core illiteracy that people struggle with. Holding back genuine economic activity waiting for the abstract units to record that activity is like waiting for some of the inches to be available so that you can measure the boards to build something. And the unit of money is itself an absurdity in the field of Applied Math. How can one make sense of equations using a term that is undefined and unstable?
Here is one telling of the history of colonization
From the abstract:
“In the European colonies, land expropriation and forced labor were used, but another important means of forcing indigenous populations to work as wage-laborers or produce cash crops was taxation and the requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency. This paper provides an overview of this method, and documents its historical importance, concentrating on Africa. Taxation also played an important role in the monetization and commoditization of African economies, and in the rise of a peripheral capitalism. As the paper demonstrates, Marx was not unaware of money taxes functioning in this manner, and the phenomenon was in no way limited to Africa.” - Matthew Forstater
From the above paper by Forstater: ".... The problem was that if the subsistence base was capable of supporting the population entirely, colonial subjects would not be compelled to offer their labor-power for sale. Colonial governments thus required alternative means for compelling the population to work for wages. The historical record is clear that one very important method for accomplishing this was to impose a tax and require that the tax obligation be settled in colonial currency.
This method had the benefit of not only forcing people to work for wages, but also of creating a value for the colonial currency and monetizing the colony. In addition, this method could be used to force the population to produce cash crops for sale. What the population had to do to obtain the currency was entirely at the discretion of the colonial government, since it was the sole source of the colonial currency. This method was widespread and important enough to be called “a secret of colonial capitalist primitive accumulation” (since it was not the only method, it must be called “a” secret). This practice is extremely well documented, yet it has hardly ever been mentioned as an important method of primitive accumulation."
"......Several points concerning the role of direct taxation in colonial capitalist primitive accumulation need to be made. First, direct taxation means that the tax cannot be, e.g. an income tax. An income tax cannot assure that a population that possesses the means of production to produce their own subsistence will enter wage labor or grow cash crops. If they simply continue to engage in subsistence production, they can avoid the cash economy and thus escape the income tax and any need for colonial currency. The tax must therefore be a direct tax, such as the poll tax, hut tax, head tax, wife tax, and land tax. Second, although taxation was often imposed in the name of securing revenue for the colonial coffers, and the tax was justified in the name of Africans bearing some of the financial burden of running the colonial state, in fact the colonial government did not need the colonial currency held by Africans."
"....The requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency rather than in-kind was
essential to producing the desired outcome,...."
Since even long before colonial times we have remained faithful servants to an illiterate and impossible system of imposed make believe.
No amount of bitching about the rate or level of taxes addresses the first illegitimate claim by government to “issue” acCounting units or its handing off of this process to banks.
"Markus, you are pointing at the load bearing beam most critiques politely step around.
Money is treated as if it were both a ruler and a thing measured, which is a category error so old it has hardened into theology. Once the unit of account is rebranded as an object of value, authority slides in quietly and never leaves. First the temple, then the crown, then the state, then the bank. Same move, different costumes.
That is why moral critiques of capitalism stall. People argue about greed inside a system whose imperatives reward extraction by design. You cannot ethically behave your way out of a structure that converts abstraction into power and power into violence. As you note, much of what we call “the economy” is bookkeeping in service of coercion, especially war. David Graeber was right to trace coinage, debt, and militarism as a single historical thread rather than separate domains.
Where I would sharpen your point is this. The problem is not just misunderstanding money. It is obedience to a measurement system that is allowed to rewrite reality. People delay building, feeding, healing, or creating until permission slips in the form of numbers appear. That is how a fiction begins to rule material life.
You are also right that blaming villains misses the deeper failure. The system does not persist because bad actors are clever. It persists because the conceptual error is rarely challenged at the root. Until money is understood as record keeping and coordination rather than wealth itself, the same cycles will repeat with different flags and uniforms."
Re: "Highlighting the current wars—many of which are over rare earth minerals—he historicises the links between the military-industrial complex, Big Tech and capitalism, and the ways in which these powers maintain their hold on power."
I have just tuned in, so not sure this will be addressed or not....but "the military industrial complex" goes so much further back than most recognize.
David Graeber takes us to his investigation of the history of coins and money and their connection to militarism.
Listen from 42:06 to 47:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs&t=2534s
So, we cannot separate the ways that we think about money and how that is done from the efforts to end war. How do we expect to stop the empire when we are ALL going along with the notion that The State "creates/issues the currency" even before Any taxes are collected? Then The State gets to choose what nefarious activity it wants labor and materials for and "pays" for that with the money it 'created' and then tells the fools going along with this that they have to pay their taxes in the form of the issuance. But since no one else can 'create the currency', and The State's currency is "legal tender" vast numbers of the populace end up in support of the very empire they despise. Most all are going along with this.
One cannot expect to stop the abuse while going along with the very operating system of control and capture of the very labor necessary to dole out the abuse.
Now every country is using this 'operating system' for control of the populace within its borders (as if that is not bad enough!) ...trouble is that the fighting between countries is so illiterate that countries are going to war over nonsense conceptual make believe!
We are killing each other over monetary illiteracy!
Let's stop this!
https://bibocurrency.com/index.php/downloads-2/19-english-root/learn/299-stop-wwiii
We must all bring up the question of Money As A System and its effect on the social order. When empires rise and fall within this ill-conceived system we seem unable to stop "the bad guys." But what if the bad guys' agenda is only facilitated by the way we collectively conceive of and then do money itself?
Here is a conversation with the IA, Grok, that addresses the question:
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_6ed64a55-dd77-4dd5-832e-2fbadea4c532
As you follow the presentation using the AI Grok you will see that the instructions given to the AI, to take advantage of the programming of the AI to be able to follow logical and provable analytical rigor, means that the AI itself concludes that ALL the so called 'higher ups' are proved to be full of nonsense, by the very AI they so highly tout!
I know it is hard for people to think that money itself is conceived of wrongly and has been so for centuries. At one time and for a very long time the whole world was wrong about the earth as the center of the solar system. And ALL of the world's "experts" were also wrong despite the consensus. Now we think that money itself is the center of economics. But money is NOT a natural resource. It is a human construct. And if its conceptual base is wrong, then the entirety of the system based on that is wrong as well.
The trouble with assigning blame to those "who put us into this mess" is that it fails to put the responsibility to correct this mess on us. It is not ever going to be the case that 'the bad guys' see the light and feel guilty and decide to change their ways. The thing is that until 'the bad guys' are also known to be 'the village idiots' they will hold a level of credibility and 'authority' that no populace should be stupid enough to accept.
So, 'the blame game' also misses the focus about 'What' is running as opposed to 'who' is running it.
The 'imposed illiteracy' that surrounds money itself cannot be cured by holding the actors in this melodrama accountable for their actions within the illiterate paradigm. You see, one first has to think of, or be forced at gunpoint to accept, that money is an item of value that can also perform the function of 'unit measure of value.' But those two are mutually exclusive. The function called 'measure' is not sensible or reliable if the unit is constantly in flux and self-referential. That is the core illiteracy about money in the 'educated' class.
The imposition of a preferred 'trade good' in more modern times may have come first, in older times, by confusing a fungible commodity with its ability to perform the function of measure. If that was the core fundamental error in thinking then correcting that then dismisses the legitimacy of imposing the preferred trade good into the societal realm of measurement.
When the 'coin of the realm' (now expanded to 'the world's reserve currency) was imposed the intent was to capture labor and resources for the nefarious intent of the imperialist. That imperialist not only does not have the power to impose such on the populace or other nations if they do not accept it....but the reason to not accept this false claim of authority is that the imperialist attempting this can clearly be shown to be illiterate about the function of measure and the abstract representation of value when using a unit based system of representation and record keeping.
We cannot keep accepting self-declared 'authority' on the part of the "issuer" of the numbers we use to do the bookkeeping about our own activity. Nor can we accept that the numbers on the ledger (or the coins of the realm that came before) are items of value all by themselves.
Yet, most all are going along with this.
Money is not a resource at all. That is the core illiteracy that people struggle with. Holding back genuine economic activity waiting for the abstract units to record that activity is like waiting for some of the inches to be available so that you can measure the boards to build something. And the unit of money is itself an absurdity in the field of Applied Math. How can one make sense of equations using a term that is undefined and unstable?
Here is one telling of the history of colonization
From the abstract:
“In the European colonies, land expropriation and forced labor were used, but another important means of forcing indigenous populations to work as wage-laborers or produce cash crops was taxation and the requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency. This paper provides an overview of this method, and documents its historical importance, concentrating on Africa. Taxation also played an important role in the monetization and commoditization of African economies, and in the rise of a peripheral capitalism. As the paper demonstrates, Marx was not unaware of money taxes functioning in this manner, and the phenomenon was in no way limited to Africa.” - Matthew Forstater
From the above paper by Forstater: ".... The problem was that if the subsistence base was capable of supporting the population entirely, colonial subjects would not be compelled to offer their labor-power for sale. Colonial governments thus required alternative means for compelling the population to work for wages. The historical record is clear that one very important method for accomplishing this was to impose a tax and require that the tax obligation be settled in colonial currency.
This method had the benefit of not only forcing people to work for wages, but also of creating a value for the colonial currency and monetizing the colony. In addition, this method could be used to force the population to produce cash crops for sale. What the population had to do to obtain the currency was entirely at the discretion of the colonial government, since it was the sole source of the colonial currency. This method was widespread and important enough to be called “a secret of colonial capitalist primitive accumulation” (since it was not the only method, it must be called “a” secret). This practice is extremely well documented, yet it has hardly ever been mentioned as an important method of primitive accumulation."
"......Several points concerning the role of direct taxation in colonial capitalist primitive accumulation need to be made. First, direct taxation means that the tax cannot be, e.g. an income tax. An income tax cannot assure that a population that possesses the means of production to produce their own subsistence will enter wage labor or grow cash crops. If they simply continue to engage in subsistence production, they can avoid the cash economy and thus escape the income tax and any need for colonial currency. The tax must therefore be a direct tax, such as the poll tax, hut tax, head tax, wife tax, and land tax. Second, although taxation was often imposed in the name of securing revenue for the colonial coffers, and the tax was justified in the name of Africans bearing some of the financial burden of running the colonial state, in fact the colonial government did not need the colonial currency held by Africans."
"....The requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency rather than in-kind was
essential to producing the desired outcome,...."
Since even long before colonial times we have remained faithful servants to an illiterate and impossible system of imposed make believe.
No amount of bitching about the rate or level of taxes addresses the first illegitimate claim by government to “issue” acCounting units or its handing off of this process to banks.
Bruce Fanger responds:
"Markus, you are pointing at the load bearing beam most critiques politely step around.
Money is treated as if it were both a ruler and a thing measured, which is a category error so old it has hardened into theology. Once the unit of account is rebranded as an object of value, authority slides in quietly and never leaves. First the temple, then the crown, then the state, then the bank. Same move, different costumes.
That is why moral critiques of capitalism stall. People argue about greed inside a system whose imperatives reward extraction by design. You cannot ethically behave your way out of a structure that converts abstraction into power and power into violence. As you note, much of what we call “the economy” is bookkeeping in service of coercion, especially war. David Graeber was right to trace coinage, debt, and militarism as a single historical thread rather than separate domains.
Where I would sharpen your point is this. The problem is not just misunderstanding money. It is obedience to a measurement system that is allowed to rewrite reality. People delay building, feeding, healing, or creating until permission slips in the form of numbers appear. That is how a fiction begins to rule material life.
You are also right that blaming villains misses the deeper failure. The system does not persist because bad actors are clever. It persists because the conceptual error is rarely challenged at the root. Until money is understood as record keeping and coordination rather than wealth itself, the same cycles will repeat with different flags and uniforms."