What I have been trying to do in this book is not so much to propose a vision of what, precisely, the next age will be like, but to throw open perspe… - David Graeber

The reason that economic textbooks now begin with imaginary villages is because it has been impossible to talk about real ones. Even some economists have been forced to admit that Smith's Land of Barter doesn't really exist. The question is why the myth is perpetuated anyway.

In our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.

The right's approach is to release the dogs of the market, throwing all traditional verities into disarray; and then, in this tumult of insecurity, offer themselves up as the last bastion of order and hierarchy, the stalwart defenders of the authority of churches and fathers against the barbarians they have themselves unleashed.