Also from this interview with David Graeber:
I’m increasingly convinced the system is only being held together by morality. A very odd, twisted morality. That’s why I wrote one book about the morality of debt, and another about the morality of work.
Even many people who know perfectly well our economic system is fundamentally stupid and unjust, also really seem to believe that anyone who doesn’t pay their debts is a bad person. Deadbeats are irresponsible and have only themselves to blame. Likewise, even people who hate their bosses seem to feel that skivers are even worse, that if you’re not working harder than you’d like at something you don’t much enjoy, preferably for someone you don’t like very much, then you’re a bad person, a parasite, and certainly, undeserving of public relief.
People really seem to believe in the sanctity of work. Not just work, jobs. Everyone should get a job. It doesn’t matter if the work is actually doing anyone any good or not. In fact at least a third of the working population appears to be personally convinced that if their job did not exist it would make no difference—or even, that the world would be a better place without it. The sanctity of work, the sanctity of debt, the sanctity of “the market”—all these things are deeply internalised and they are all extremely problematic.
Problematic as … Wrong?
Rich people do not believe in debt, at least not in their own debt. They certainly do not think that paying their debts is the matter of honour. Half of my former employers wouldn’t have paid me at all if they could figure out a way not to. But even more, if you’re in a position of weakness, debt is morality; if you’re in a position of strength, debt is power. That is why I started a book on Debt with an old proverb: if you owe a bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank of hundred million dollars, you own the bank.
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But the moral trick is so bizarrely effective. Otherwise decent people think it’s totally justified to take food away from hungry children because their former dictator took out a bad loan.