Understanding The Weakness Of Indebtedness

'We don't know what debt is, the very flexibility of the concept is the basis of it's power. If History shows anything it is that there is no better way to justify relations founded on violence to make such relations seem moral than by reframing them in the language of debt-above all because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong. Mafiosi understand this. So do the commanders of conquering armies. For thousands of years violent men have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them somethng. If nothing else they "owe them their lives" (a telling phrase) because they haven't been killed.'
-'Debt the first 5000 years'-David Graeber