Your demand would have made sense if Debt was a peer-reviewed scholarly work and not a political screed aimed at a lay readership.

But then again, there is enough nonsense in there than can be picked apart without being a domain expert. For example, Graeber claims Adam Smith's famous "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest" thesis is wrong because shopkeepers of the time mostly sold goods on credit and thus the customers were in fact depending on their benevolence. This blithe conflation of credit with benevolence should evoke laughter from anyone who is even remotely familiar with how businesses are run.

And dunking on Smith is how Graeber builds his grand neo-liberal economics conspiracy theory.

I think Debt is a terrible book but that's not a convincing or even substantive review. Even more bizzare is the author admitting to dunking on the book without even having read it!

Does Noah Smith consider himself left-wing? I've always tagged him as "right-wing but not totally insane" as he often seems to be explaining bits of reality to his audience who consider them politically incorrect, like renewables and climate change not being a hoax, or him explaining that being 'woke' is okay, as long as you aren't rude to white men.

Wow, I didn't know Graeber posted on HN. May he rest in peace.

I followed the stoush between DeLong and Graeber closely, and my strong impression is that Graeber was thin-skinned, vengeful, often inaccurate and unable to stand criticism. DeLong was a bit trolly, but nothing a competent, stable writer shouldn't have been able to handle. This impression is also borne out by my own reading of Graeber's work, and his reprehensible actions as a working academic:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-one-prominent-journal-...