Talk:Debt: The First 5,000 Years

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Jacobin magazine is described as radical left under the Critical reception heading. Loaded words without an agreed definition are used here for persuasion and introduce bias whether this opinion is intentional or not. Is the source Jacobin worth mentioning at all if it's described as radical left? Jacobin, or Fox News or the New York Times? The debate here isn't the media - loaded terms like left or right need to be avoided.

The above was an anonymous post ~2019-05-26T01:40:08 by User:68.33.74.184

This sounds like something that may deserve serious consideration. Sadly, I do not have to even identify what it is about this article that seems to concern this anonymous poster. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:39, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

"the massive amounts of gold and silver extracted from the Americas"

Seriously? Are those the words of the author of the wiki article, or of the book author himself? --87.179.4.25 (talk) 23:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

... Why are you asking? A massive amount of gold and silver was extracted from the Americas.

Criticisms deleted

@Grayfell: I accept that Wikipedia policy on Wikipedia:Reliable sources says that, "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable", including personal blogs and Wikipedia.

However, I think they are appropriate on "talk" pages. In particular, if such references are deleted, I think it's preferable to move the questionable content to the associated "talk" page, which I'm doing now: On 2019-03-07 an anonymous user (134.7.130.142) deleted a reference to a blog by Ann Leckie, who "observed that Graeber had too many errors regarding subjects with which she was familiar for her to trust his statements regarding subjects with which she was not." A few minutes later User:Grayfell deleted a reference to a blog by Bradford DeLong, a "Professor" (and therefore presumably tenured) of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Prior to the first of these two deletions the passage read as follows:

Economist Bradford DeLong has criticized Graeber's factual accuracy, calling the book "Debt: My First 5,000 Mistakes"; similarly, novelist Ann Leckie has observed that Graeber had too many errors regarding subjects with which she was familiar for her to trust his statements regarding subjects with which she was not.

I read Graeber's Debt a few years ago and was impressed with it. However, I don't have the expertise of DeLong. Therefore, before I cite it again, I think I should review criticisms like his to help me evaluate the extent to which I believe Graeber. For that purpose, I think it's useful to retain those references at least in this "Talk" page. DavidMCEddy (talk) 12:22, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

The talk page is the appropriate place to discuss how to improve the article, not the place to store further reading. I do not object to these links being here, but why, exactly, does this improve the article?

When I made the edit, I was confused about the links and did not look at the correct DeLong blog post. After looking at DeLong's review, I do not see any value to including it in the article. It is almost entirely a summary of other people's reviews with his own snark thrown in. When unreliable sources cite other sources, we ignore this and just go with the original source. In this case, those two sources are also blogs. The Leckie one is mainly based on specific points about Sumerian mythology. Any explanation of this review would have to be with that context, and would also have to indicate why she is a topic expert who is qualified to discuss Sumerian mythology, per WP:SPS.

For the record, I am not the IP, but this article is on my watchlist, and the IP's self-revert attracted my attention. Grayfell (talk) 22:18, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. It's on my watchlist, also.

The references you deleted mention specifics that could potentially be turned into improvements in this article, e.g., by potentially helping someone else find more appropriate documentation of deficiencies with this book.

Beyond that, I sometimes look for reviews, whether published in refereed academic journals or on blogs, to help me evaluate the extent to which there appears to be expert consensus about a subject.

The Wikipedia article on Bradford DeLong and his page on the UC-Berkeley web site both claim he has expertise in economic history. As far as I know, nobody obtains a title of "professor", which DeLong has, at a major research university in the US like UC-Berkeley without an extensive record of publications in respected, refereed academic journals. For that reason, I think it's worth making it easier for others to find that blog, even if it isn't in a refereed academic journal. (I'd be surprised if he'd get the same snarky language accepted in a refereed academic journal, but the blog includes enough specifics, I think, to be useful.)

DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:02, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Sure. As a practical matter, blogs often point towards reliable sources, but caution is called for, since a group of blogs which cite each other still needs outside signs of significance. After all, how many blogs should we link, and which ones did we leave out? I don't question his expertise in economics, but his personal opinion would still have to be properly explained, and we would need at least some indication that this opinion is significant to the book. I am not saying it isn't, of course, but the standards need to be a bit higher. Something as broad as saying that it contains errors isn't going to work. Graeber has many critics, and the book covered a broad number of topics. Giving this one criticism special weight is potentially arbitrary.

Looking through JSTOR, there are plenty of academic reviews within easy reach. When I have a chance I will look closer and try and expand the section with more perspectives. Grayfell (talk) 01:56, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Wonderful. I don't have easy access to anything like JSTOR. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:30, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

References

Comma

The lede paragraph and the book cover include the comma in "5,000" but the title of this article ("Debt: The First 5000 Years") does not include a comma. Should we put the comma in? Harej (talk) 18:15, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Put criticisms together in one section

Let's move a few sentences into a different section. Starting with "Nevertheless, Graeber's ideas" and continuing till the end of that paragraph - let's move those sentences into the section entitled "Critical reception." We'll need to slightly change the wording, so that it will still flow like the rest does. The section "Anti-capitalist critique" contains *descriptions* of the ideas in the book, whereas the section "Critical reception" contains *criticisms* of the ideas in the book. keenuck (talk) 11:54, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

where is delong ??

Brad deLong, Prof of economic history at Univ California Berkeley, is a well known blogger. He did an entire series of blog posts criticizing debt as full of BS and factual errors eg https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/11/monday-smackdown-in-the-absence-of-high-quality-delong-smackdowns-back-to-david-graeber.html

I think a professor at UCB is, by definition a reliable source — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:197:D00:3CA0:39DF:89AA:1A3:1F55 (talk) 15:35, 30 December 2023 (UTC)