> I’m sorry, but, we’d be foolish to discard anything and everything that we can’t quantify due to complexity or a lack of understanding of what specifically to consider.
That's not the criticism here. The criticism is just getting a lot of stuff wrong including stuff he wouldn't have gotten wrong if he just did some basic fact checking.
Just look at this mishmash of uninformed summaries, howlers, and bold claims that are disconnected from an awareness of how the systems he describes actually work:
"Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages"
"When Saddam Hussein made the bold move of singlehandedly switching from the dollar to the euro in 2000, followed by Iran in 2001, this was quickly followed by American bombing and military occupation. How much Hussein’s decision to buck the dollar really weighed into the U.S. decision to depose him is impossible to know, but no country in a position to make a similar switch can ignore the possibility. The result, among policymakers particularly in the global South, is widespread terror."
Now if Graeber had written a book on the joys of fishing, we wouldn't expect a large amount of numerical fact checks. But for a book on debt -- which is really a book on financial systems across history, we do expect that the conclusions be consistent with the data as we know it. Graeber never made those consistency checks, so much of his observations can be ruled out and they really reveal an incredible state of being out-of-touch.
That said, he does provide rich examples and historical footnotes so I would recommend that people read his book. I just wouldn't recommend that people believe him when he draws certain conclusions and that people understand they are reading a polemical rather than an academic work.
That's not the criticism here. The criticism is just getting a lot of stuff wrong including stuff he wouldn't have gotten wrong if he just did some basic fact checking.
Just look at this mishmash of uninformed summaries, howlers, and bold claims that are disconnected from an awareness of how the systems he describes actually work:
"Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages"
"When Saddam Hussein made the bold move of singlehandedly switching from the dollar to the euro in 2000, followed by Iran in 2001, this was quickly followed by American bombing and military occupation. How much Hussein’s decision to buck the dollar really weighed into the U.S. decision to depose him is impossible to know, but no country in a position to make a similar switch can ignore the possibility. The result, among policymakers particularly in the global South, is widespread terror."
c.f. https://savageminds.org/2013/02/09/delong-and-the-economists...
You can find other examples here:
https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-t...
Now if Graeber had written a book on the joys of fishing, we wouldn't expect a large amount of numerical fact checks. But for a book on debt -- which is really a book on financial systems across history, we do expect that the conclusions be consistent with the data as we know it. Graeber never made those consistency checks, so much of his observations can be ruled out and they really reveal an incredible state of being out-of-touch.
That said, he does provide rich examples and historical footnotes so I would recommend that people read his book. I just wouldn't recommend that people believe him when he draws certain conclusions and that people understand they are reading a polemical rather than an academic work.