Quote:
Originally Posted by schola  Charging money to use money...hmm it almost seems like a paradox.
I have some issues with it.
Because its main purpose throughout history has been to take property and create slaves, it seems like there may be something that's "not right" about usury.
One problem is, money isn't really real. It's just a concept. And there are differing definitions of money, what makes good money, etc. I think part of the reason that usury is considered OK is this confusion over what money really is.
Since it helps to use metaphors or analogies to understand difficult concepts, I'll throw one out there for anyone who wants to take a crack at it:
If a person borrows a certain amount of "something" from you, how can you ask a person to bring back more of that thing than what you gave him in the first place?
Consider for a moment that we live in a barter system without any money. We are both farmers and I lend you my cow. Would you sign the contract if I required you to bring back more than one cow (charge interest)? You would probably think that was unfair. You'd say, "That's why I'm borrowing the friggin' cow in the first place you dummy! Because I don't have enough."
It doesn't make sense to make a person bring back more of the same thing he borrowed, does it? But that's what usury is.
What if it was something that is only useful if it is consumed, because that is true about money. Money isn't useful until you spend it. Food is only useful if you eat it, so maybe that is a good example.
Now here's where it really gets weird. Let's say I borrow 5 apples from you. It already seems weird, borrowing food? How can I do that? Once I eat those apples, they're gone. I can't return something that disappears when I use it and the whole point of borrowing is so I can use it.
On top of this, you decide to charge me interest in the forum of 1 apple a month for every month that I don't bring your 5 apples back. Now this is REALLY starting to sound like a raw deal. No thanks.
Based on those scenarios, here's my opinion:
It's not that usury is right or wrong per se, it's that no one in their right mind would agree to borrow money at interest if they really understood what they were agreeing to. |
no no no!!!! You miss the point of loans- as do seemingly most Americans- the source of a lot of current economic pain and past market bubbles... In one sense I totally agree- borrowing/loans to fund consumption is nonsensical- credit card debts without a particular plan are absolutely awful (short-term, credit cards also serve a useful purpose as more secure cash-substitute if you pay them off each month so don't mean to totally disparage...). If you "borrow" apples to just eat them and sit on your ass some more, I agree the whole thing might as well be called a gift or theft depending on circumstances.
The point is if you use money to make more money- if you borrowed a cow to breed it and sell the milk (rather than "borrowing" to slaughter and eat it) a farmer would be perfectly justified in expecting a cow plus a calf in return for the loan of a cow for a year (or something... no idea about the particular economics of cows and whether a calf would be fair interest- maybe you'd end up with joint ownership of the calf? or shared profits from the sale or slaughter of the calf? ugh as a vegan the whole thing turns my stomach...) But this is also the point of money- to be
able to split ownership and share profits without requiring direct barter- the farmer might prefer a cash interest payment rather than a percentage ownership of a calf... universally accepted cash vastly simplifies trade scenarios- we have a hard time even imagining them requiring everything settled up in real useful property instead of cash.