Brian Yahn’s Reviews > Debt: The First 5,000 Years > Status Update

The vast majority of people are in debt to a few rich creditors. Debt shapes so much or our individual lives and our collective society. I'm really glad I'm reading this. It's sort of like when people say you spend 1/3rd of your life asleep, so you should have a nice car. Most people spend their whole lives in debt, so you should probably learn about it! It's eye opening, to say the least.

I spend a lot of time thinking about if what I'm doing is a good use of my time -- ironically.

I haven't spent much time thinking about why we as a society dedicate so much of our lives to "making money".

But this book spells out how big of a role debt plays into that, and how we've been trapped into debt from birth, basically forever. So much of our beliefs revolve around escaping debt. But we only get deeper.

Wow, the title sounds like this book would be a major snooze, but hot damn it's absolutely fascinating.

But it's equal parts depressing. So much of human life revolves around the economy. We like to think the economy exists because it suits our needs. But we've more or less built our life around the economy, even though it's orthogonal to our wants and needs.

Best of all, the narrative is great!