There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?

My bullshit detectors light up when I see weasel words like “extremely limited” and “apparently infinite.”

The music industry in the United States is valued at about $15 billion.

There are about 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S.

Let’s say the average salary of a corporate lawyer is $120,000.

I can’t find good information on how many lawyers are “corporate.” Some statistics from a California city suggest that real estate and family law are the biggest areas of practice. Criminal law, accidents and motor vehicle practices are also large.

If ten percent of lawyers are “corporate” by Graeber’s unspecified standard, I calculate a total value of about $15 billion, the same as for music.

An important difference, I think, is that people buy (or steal) just as much music as they want, and nobody forces them to get more than they enjoy. Lawyers, in contrast, are needed to comply with a growing mountain of laws that apply to most every aspect of modern life. One group claims that compliance with federal regulations costs $1.8 trillion, about as much as is collected in income taxes. This is probably exaggerated, but I think it's absurd to suggest that corporate lawyers have it good because the 1% really like them.

Graeber has a habit of "arguing" by posing questions.