Response to Debt and Justice

The reading that I responded to the most was the one concerning debt. The points that Graeber made about the monetary system and the guilt that often comes hand-in-hand with owing someone money made me aware of the unfair practices that powerful people and institutions use to assert control monetarily. The banking system and the economy in the United States are engineered to punish the struggling individual, while the banks and major corporations are bailed out if they find themselves in financial peril. This also ties in with the excerpts by Sandel, about how the financial crisis of 2008 “rewarded” Wall Street for their failure. However, tying in these concepts with the theme of apocalypse, it is scary to imagine the state of destruction society as we know it would be in if the capitalist system faltered. It is this fear, I believe, which drives us to bail out banks and accept individual debt as a crime. Without the superiority of banks, society as we know it would not exist, which drives us to place the importance of the survival of the greedy bank above the importance of individual prosperity.