If you weren't aware, David Graeber was one of the intellectual instigators of Occupy Wall street. He wasn't directly responsible for all, nor even most of their strategies, tactics, and ultimately their failures (thus far).

Once you put aside criticisms of him as anarchist (a poorly understood term these days), or any number of real or pseudo-Marxist end-games that seem to flow from his words at times, the value of his observations, insights and analysis are prescient, clear, and damned interesting to ponder. He has a talent for explaining the underpinnings of our predicament called capitalism and its risks to a human species which now seems so dependent on its teetering efficiencies (or inefficiencies, depending on one's outlook).

Graeber has written an important essay, which I really hope will give rise to more like it. While the foundational thinkers like Graeber matter a lot, we need to also hear ideas from others who might be a little bit better at extracting solutions (or at least exposing productive directions) from an expanding morass of rapidly evolving economic, social and spiritual crises which are now threatening the present and future generations of a highly vulnerable human race.

It's a long read, but well worth the time.

Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

by David Graeber