Debt By Design

This book explains how our monetary system works and how commercial banks create money. The effects of this are examined, along with an alternate monetary system that is vastly superior - which we term Fair Money. Topics covered include: how commercial banks create money, the importance of seigniorage, how quantitative easing works, what monetary policy really means, how inter-bank payments work, the distraction of fractional reserve banking, the Guernsey experiment, the Chicago Plan, the 5 different money classes, why depositors are creditors, the war on cash, how banks buy currency notes, how bank balance sheets work, constraints on money creation, consequences of debt monetisation, the use of misleading terminology, the historical role of gold, the benefits of an asset-based currency, and the transition to a better monetary system. Extracts are provided from the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve System, the International Monetary Fund and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Are you working on a codebase where cost overruns, death marches, and heroic fights with legacy code monsters are the norm? Battle these adversaries with novel ways to identify and prioritize technical debt, based on behavioral data from how developers work with code. And that's just for starters. Because good code involves social design, as well as technical design, you can find surprising dependencies between people and code to resolve coordination bottlenecks among teams. Best of all, the techniques build on behavioral data that you already have: your version-control system. Join the fight for better code! Use statistics and data science to uncover both problematic code and the behavioral patterns of the developers who build your software. This combination gives you insights you can't get from the code alone. Use these insights to prioritize refactoring needs, measure their effect, find implicit dependencies between different modules, and automatically create knowledge maps of your system based on actual code contributions. In a radical, much-needed change from common practice, guide organizational decisions with objective data by measuring how well your development teams align with the software architecture. Discover a comprehensive set of practical analysis techniques based on version-control data, where each point is illustrated with a case study from a real-world codebase. Because the techniques are language neutral, you can apply them to your own code no matter what programming language you use. Guide organizational decisions with objective data by measuring how well your development teams align with the software architecture. Apply research findings from social psychology to software development, ensuring you get the tools you need to coach your organization towards better code. If you're an experienced programmer, software architect, or technical manager, you'll get a new perspective that will change how you work with code. What You Need: You don't have to install anything to follow along in the book. TThe case studies in the book use well-known open source projects hosted on GitHub. You'll use CodeScene, a free software analysis tool for open source projects, for the case studies. We also discuss alternative tooling options where they exist.

As governments and individuals struggle with growing indebtedness, the topic of debt itself – what it is, what it means, and how we understand it – has never been more salient. This collection brings together a range of contributions from many disciplines and around the world to consider debt through various lenses, including design, art, technology, political economy, social justice, surveillance, protest, education, urban and virtual spaces, and more. Aiming not just to advance scholarship, but to push ahead real change in the world, the book offers not only analytical insights and conceptual apparatuses, but practical tools and radical inspirations as well. A powerful analysis of a concept that has become ever more central to everyday society, InDEBTed to Intervene will be essential reading for scholars and citizens alike.

“This is an incredibly wise and useful book. The authors have considerable real-world experience in delivering quality systems that matter, and their expertise shines through in these pages. Here you will learn what technical debt is, what is it not, how to manage it, and how to pay it down in responsible ways. This is a book I wish I had when I was just beginning my career. The authors present a myriad of case studies, born from years of experience, and offer a multitude of actionable insights for how to apply it to your project.” –Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Master Best Practices for Managing Technical Debt to Promote Software Quality and Productivity As software systems mature, earlier design or code decisions made in the context of budget or schedule constraints increasingly impede evolution and innovation. This phenomenon is called technical debt, and practical solutions exist. In Managing Technical Debt, three leading experts introduce integrated, empirically developed principles and practices that any software professional can use to gain control of technical debt in any software system. Using real-life examples, the authors explain the forms of technical debt that afflict software-intensive systems, their root causes, and their impacts. They introduce proven approaches for identifying and assessing specific sources of technical debt, limiting new debt, and “paying off” debt over time. They describe how to establish managing technical debt as a core software engineering practice in your organization. Discover how technical debt damages manageability, quality, productivity, and morale–and what you can do about it Clarify root causes of debt, including the linked roles of business goals, source code, architecture, testing, and infrastructure Identify technical debt items, and analyze their costs so you can prioritize action Choose the right solution for each technical debt item: eliminate, reduce, or mitigate Integrate software engineering practices that minimize new debt Managing Technical Debt will be a valuable resource for every software professional who wants to accelerate innovation in existing systems, or build new systems that will be easier to maintain and evolve.

This book is the first comprehensive study of debts and credit system at Emar. It focuses on the socio-economic aspects of credit access and indebtedness as well as on the motivations behind debts and debt settlement in the city of Emar. The credit system is analyzed through several factors: the purpose of debts, i.e., productive or consumptive; the procedures for granting loans; the strategies put in place to meet an obligation and to cope with economic difficulties; the consequences of non-fulfillment, which may lead to servitude or slavery; the different types of slavery; slave prices; the mechanisms of enslavement; and termination of slavery. Moneylending practices and the formation of servile conditions at Emar are studied in the context of the Syrian economy aiming to understand whether the Emar evidence conforms with a socio political and economic crisis that is generally acknowledged to have struck Syria, Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia at the end of the Late Bronze Age. This work is of sure relevance for scholars interested in socio-economic history, not only of the pertinent historical-geographical area.

Awareness of design smells – indicators of common design problems – helps developers or software engineers understand mistakes made while designing, what design principles were overlooked or misapplied, and what principles need to be applied properly to address those smells through refactoring. Developers and software engineers may "know" principles and patterns, but are not aware of the "smells" that exist in their design because of wrong or mis-application of principles or patterns. These smells tend to contribute heavily to technical debt – further time owed to fix projects thought to be complete – and need to be addressed via proper refactoring.Refactoring for Software Design Smells presents 25 structural design smells, their role in identifying design issues, and potential refactoring solutions. Organized across common areas of software design, each smell is presented with diagrams and examples illustrating the poor design practices and the problems that result, creating a catalog of nuggets of readily usable information that developers or engineers can apply in their projects. The authors distill their research and experience as consultants and trainers, providing insights that have been used to improve refactoring and reduce the time and costs of managing software projects. Along the way they recount anecdotes from actual projects on which the relevant smell helped address a design issue. Contains a comprehensive catalog of 25 structural design smells (organized around four fundamental designprinciples) that contribute to technical debt in software projects Presents a unique naming scheme for smells that helps understand the cause of a smell as well as pointstoward its potential refactoring Includes illustrative examples that showcase the poor design practices underlying a smell and the problemsthat result Covers pragmatic techniques for refactoring design smells to manage technical debt and to create and maintainhigh-quality software in practice Presents insightful anecdotes and case studies drawn from the trenches of real-world projects

Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Erin Skye Kelly wrote Get the Hell Out of Debt after her own struggle to become consumer-debt free. She was tired of listening to middle-aged men in suits tell her to consolidate and refinance her debt when all that seemed to happen was she’d end up in more of it while they profited from it. When Kelly figured out the two most important tools to money management—and started achieving massive results—other women wanted to join in on the debt-free journey. With her sense of humor and straight-shooting sensibilities, Erin began transforming lives. This book is not only a step-by-step process that will walk you through how to pay off your debt—it’s a deeply personal journey centered around changing your mindset. As you master each of the three phases through repetition, you will create your own financial freedom, allowing you to live debt-free forever and create wealth and abundance that will positively impact your life—and the people you love and serve. No matter how much consumer debt you carry, this book is a judgment-free zone from cover-to-cover. Your dreams are welcome here.