In fact, our standard account of monetary history is precisely backwards. We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop c… - David Graeber

One could well argue that if there is any human essence, it is precisely our capacity to imagine that we have one.

If the existence of bullshit jobs seems to defy the logic of capitalism, one possible reason for their proliferation might be that the existing system isn’t capitalism—or at least, isn’t any sort of capitalism that would be recognizable from the works of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or, for that matter, Ludwig von Mises or Milton Friedman.

Honor is the same as credit; it's one's ability to keep ones promises, but also, in the case of a wrong, to "get even".