“Exchange is all about equivalence.”
Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Five, "A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Moral Relations", p. 103
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David Graeber 55
American anthropologist and anarchist 1961Related quotes

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)

“All human activities are equivalent … and … all are on principle doomed to failure.”
Conclusion, II
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 5, Pokernomics, p. 127

“One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature.”
Avot of Rabbi Natan (c. 700 – 900)
Misattributed

“By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.”
Economic harmonies, par. 4.110.

“Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities”
Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter V.
Context: Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
“Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.”
As quoted in The School Day Begins : A Guide to Opening Exercises, Grades Kindergarten - 12 (1967) by Agnes Krarup