@N2PE_Network

**The End of Yesterday's Gillian Tett "Anthro-Vision" Event:

Brad DeLong: May I grab the moderators’s privilege to ask the last question, apropos of the return of barter?

Partha Dasgupta writes that we started out doing the... 1/
@N2PE_Network [DeLong cont.] ... division-of-labor thing with our kin and our immediate neighbors, with the division-of-labor made possible via our thick, ongoing long-time extended gift exchange relationships with those that we had good sociological reason to trust. Then we invented... 2/
[DeLong cont.] ...money. Money was liquid trust. You no longer had to know someone very well to have them be part of your division -of-labor. All 8 billion of us could be part of our division-of-labor through the non-extended one-shot gift-exchange relationships that we... 3/
[DeLong cont.]... call “buying” and “selling”.

From money as a trust token we then get to token of money to monetary deb. And then, somehow, the moneylender gives you a gift and puts you even further into sociological debt to him by only collecting half your interest... 4/
[DeLong cont.]... due now and adding the other half onto the principle, thus putting you further into economic debt as well.

Now we find ourselves bypassing the trust-token of money, and returning to swapping—swapping data for services. Somehow we have micropayments for... 5/
[DeLong cont.]... advertisements via Google but not micropayments for information and entertainment.

I look at this, and I find that I have very different reactions:

Jeff Bezos—Amazon—wants my money and my data. I am happy to give it to him. I know he will use my... 6/
[DeLong cont.]... data to try to put things on front of my nose that I might want to buy and enjoy. And I will know that I can put the item in my shopping bag, and then I will go off and think about it for a day or a week or two, and maybe come back—if I think the... 7/
[DeLong cont.]... purchase will make me happy, and I believe that if I decide to make the purchase it will make me happy. Jeff Bezos—Amazon—is my gift-exchange relationship friend, in that our sociological exchange ties are to our mutual benefit and the reinforcement of... 8/
[DeLong cont.]... at least a simulacrum of mutual benevolent concern for each other.

On the other hand Jack Dorsey—Twitter—wants my data and wants my money. He wants my data so that he can construct an algorithmic feed that will keep me clicking on tweets so he can show... 9/
[DeLong cont.]... me more ads: he wants to glue my eyeballs to his screen even if—perhaps especially if, since fight-or-flight is a stropng psychological force—it makes me unhappy. In some sense he is not my friend: our interactions here do not create what Albert Hirschman... 10/
[DeLong cont.]... called doux commerce, sweet commerce, as we view everyone around us as a potential partner in win-win exchange, and thus as a benevolently-intentioned friend. I view Jack Dorsey as someone who wants to hack my brain—diminish my autonomy to direct my... 11/
[DeLong cont.]... attention where my considered self would wish—without having the slightest concern for whether this attention-hacking is for my ill or not.

How should we think about these issues?

Gillian Tett: I think I have 30 seconds to answer. You raised a huge... 12/
[Tett cont.]... question, requiring the blending of economic thinking with computer science and technology and social science. Rather than try and give a quick answer let me simply suggest that this is going to be probably one of the most fruitful areas for economists... 13/
[Tett cont.]... and for anthropologists to dive into in the coming years…. We will see anevolutionary break point on many levels, about how we imagine money and value in a world of digital connections. Who we trust, how we build cohesion, and how we look at power... 14/
[Tett cont.]... structures is shifting very fast…. This is going to get more and more important in the years ahead. I salute the work that people are doing in the world of data science and computer science and social science…. The questions you end on are incredibly... 15/
[Tett cont.]... important. I throw themover to your amazing community to pick them up and run with it.

Brad DeLong: And with that, Gillian Tett performatively demonstrates that her ultimate and highest allegiance is to the tribe of academia, for she has ended with a... 16/
[DeLong cont.]... call for further research. Thank you very much for coming. This has been greatly greatly appreciated. This has been truly wonderful. Thank you again, thank you all for coming. 17/END

amazon.com/Anthro-Vision-…

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More from @delong

20 Nov
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18 Nov
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@gilliantett ...political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett will discuss her new book that points to anthropology—the study of human culture. gossip... 2/
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17 Nov
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BRIEFLY NOTED: FOR 2021-11-03 We, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First: Jason Zweig soft peddles the idiocy of Kevin Hassett and James Glassman on the 18 years-late Dow 36000 day. Buy-and-hold is a good investment strategy for the U.S. stock market. The strategy... 1/
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What is Kevin Hassett saying today, on Dow 36,000 day? In my inbox:

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1 Nov
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-11-01 Mo, by @delong braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

I see the late David Graeber is in the news today. I do not trust anything he ever wrote. Let me tell you why. Let me pick a chapter at random from Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years… I land on... 1/
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"I would hear occasional rumors of secret gold vaults underneath the Twin Towers in Manhattan.... After the Towers were destroyed… 2/
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1 Nov
I see the late David Graeber is in the news today.

I do not trust anything he ever wrote. Let me tell you why.

Let me pick a chapter at random from Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years… I land on chapter 12… I start reading… I come to the third... 1/
...page <archive.org/details/DebtTh…> and find:

"I would hear occasional rumors of secret gold vaults underneath the Twin Towers in Manhattan.... After the Towers were destroyed… one of the first questions many New Yorkers asked was: What happened to the money?... Some... 2/
[Graeber cont.]: "...spoke of legions of emergency workers secretly summoned… desperately carting off tons of bullion…. One particularly colorful conspiracy theory suggested that the entire attack was really staged by speculators…. The truly remarkable thing… is... 3/
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