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The Graeber effect — the rise of the barter economy & the death of BS jobs
“For me, this is exactly what’s so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money — and then tell us that it’s only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money.” ― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
As a Product Design Strategist, with a passion for “good” and sustainable design solutions, I have wanted to write a short post on an old business model that seems to be taking rise online today — the Barter economy. Meant as a short read, this post focuses on the confluence of design, economics and work futures.
In 2001, shortly after the financial crisis, American anthropologist and anarchist activist David Rolfe Graeber published Debt: The First 5,000 Years. His book challenged how economists think about debt, credit, and barter. He argues that many economists view the economy and history as evolutionary in nature — a move from our so-called “primitive” era, where people engaged in barter; they later “evolved” and “modernized” to the adaptation of money, eventually using banks, credit, and I add, of late, cryptocurrency. While…
