Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth Read Free

gene-linked configurations — certain building blocks or foundation stones, if you like — the many variations of basic human behaviours that we see around us would never occur at all. An online video game such as Everquest , in which you have to work your way up from rabbit-skinner to castle-owning knight by selling and trading, co-operating with fellow players on group missions, and launching raids on other castles, would be unthinkable if we were not both a social species and one aware of hierarchies.
    What corresponding ancient inner foundation stone underlies the elaborate fretwork of debt that surrounds us on every side? Why are we so open to offers of present-time advantage in exchange for future though onerous repayment? Is it simply that we’re programmed to snatch the low-hanging fruit and gobble down as much of it as we can, without thinking ahead to the fruitless days that may then lie ahead of us? Well, partly: seventy-two hours without fluids or two weeks without food and you’re most likely dead, so if you don’t eat some of that low-hanging fruit right now you aren’t going to be around six months later to congratulate yourself on your capacity for self-restraint and delayed gratification. In that respect, credit cards are almost guaranteed to make money for the lender, since “grab it now” may be a variant of a behaviour selected for in hunter-gatherer days, long before anyone ever thought about saving up for their retirement. A bird in the hand really was worth two in the bush then, and a bird crammed into your mouth was worth even more. But is it just a case of short-term gain followed by long-term pain? Is debt created from our own greed or even — more charitably — from our own need?
    I postulate that there’s another ancient inner foundation stone without which debt and credit structures could not exist: our sense of fairness. Viewed in the best light, this is an admirable human characteristic. Without our sense of fairness, the bright side of which is “one good turn deserves another,” we wouldn’t recognize the fairness of paying back what we’ve borrowed, and thus no one would ever be stupid enough to lend anything to anyone else with an expectation of return. Spiders don’t share out the bluebottles among other adult spiders: only social animals indulge in sharing out. The dark side of the sense of fairness is the sense of unfairness, which results in gloating when you’ve got away with being unfair, or else guilt; and in rage and vengeance, when the unfairness has been visited upon you.
    Children start saying, “That’s not fair!” at the age of four or so, long before they’re interested in sophisticated investment vehicles or have any sense of the value of coins and bills. They are also filled with satisfaction when the villain in a bedtime story gets an unambiguous comeuppance, and made uneasy when such retribution doesn’t happen. Forgiveness and mercy, like olives and anchovies, seem to be acquired later, or — if the culture is unfavourable to them — not. But for young children, putting a bad person into a barrel studded with nails and rolling him or her into the sea restores the cosmic balance and removes the malevolent force from view, and the little ones sleep easier at night.
    The interest in fairness elaborates with age. After seven, there’s a legalistic phase in which the fairness — or, usually, the unfairness — of any rule imposed by adults is argued relentlessly. As this age, too, the sense of fairness can take curious forms. For instance, in the 1980s there was a strange ritual among nine-year-old children that went like this: during car rides, you stared out the window until you spotted a Volkswagen Beetle. Then you hit your child companion on the arm, shouting, “Punch-buggy, no punch-backs!” Seeing the Volkswagen Beetle first meant that you had the right to punch the other child, and adding a codicil —“No punch-backs!”— meant that he or