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Message 5436
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| Subject: | [socialcredit] Re: Definition of usury. | | Date: | Tuesday, July 1, 2008 09:40:01 (-0700) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
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You are quite right, Joe, that because of inflation there is "not reward without
risk" to the recipients of interest. The biggest risk is the risk of
default--the default insurance premium is the largest component of the totality
of interest collected. Which is why interest rates on unsecured loans can be
four or five times the rates on secured loans, such as mortgages.
The larger question is what in the world does risk have to do with the morality
of collecting or paying interest? After all, in the creditary economy, interest
is merely the service charge for financial services rendered. The so-called
moral proscription is based on fallacious Aristotelian economics and false
translations from the ancient Scriptures. We in the twenty-first century should
be above such errors. We are after all expected to be educated and open-minded
people.
Lenders, as do all entrepreneurs, attempt to minimize risk. It is perfectly
moral to do so, so long as they are playing within the rules.
Besides, the default premium and adjustments for inflation are only two of the
components of interest collected. The others are to cover ordinary business
expenses, including salaries and wages; plus a mark-up for a reasonable profit.
--------------replying to-------------------
Subject: Re: [socialcredit] Definition of usury.
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 18:49:06 (-0700)
From: Joe Thomson <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
In reply to: Message 5405 (written by Martin Hattersley)
(Martin wrote:-) Something that concerns me about Douglas is the fact that he
appears to wish to superimpose his Social Credit remedies on a banking system not
fundamentally changed from the present. As I see it, the toleration of interest
(reward without risk), is in fact a means by which those who issue credit become
more and more wealthy at the expenses of the public, the value of whose money is
steadily eroded by inflation.
(Joe comments:-) I think what you're saying about Douglas above may well be
true, Martin.
But is there really "reward without risk" for those who "issue credit" if the
value of the public's money is steadily eroded by inflation?
For is not the "public's money" the same money by which you say the issuers of
credit will become "more and more wealthy"?
And if it is, and it's being steadily eroded by inflation over time in terms
of what it'll buy, there's certainly a "risk" present there, too, I would think.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Hattersley" <jmartinh@shaw.ca>
To: <socialcredit@elistas.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 4:15 PM
Subject: [socialcredit] Definition of usury.
I have been interested by the discussion on what is usury that has been taking
place.
R.H.Tawney, in his classic "Relligion and the Rise of Capitalism", after
discussing and dismissing various types of dealing which involve risk, and so are
not usurious, gives a definition as follows:
"What remained to the end unlawful was that which appears in modern economics
textbooks as 'pure interest' - interest as a fixed payment stipulated in advance
for a loan of money or wares without risk to the lender.... The essence or usury
was that it was certain, and that whether the borrower gained or lost, the usurer
took his poind of flesh."
(Transaction Publishers edition, 1998, p.42)
Summarizing the present relationship between the Capitalist and the Christian
approaches to life, where the former has effectively excluded the area of
commerce from the control of morality, he concludes: (ibid, p.286)
"the quality in modern society which is most sharply opposed to the teaching
ascribed to the founder of the Christian faith ... consists in the assumption,
accepted by most reformers with hardly less naivete than by the defenders of the
established order, that the attainment of material riches is the supreme object
of human endeavour and the final criterion of human success...What is certain is
that it is the negation of any system of thought or morals which can, except by a
metaphor, be described as Christian. Compromise is as impossible between the
church of Christ and the idolatry of Wealth, which is the practical religion of
Capitalist societies, as it was between the Church and the State idolatry of the
Roman Empire."
In his "Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt", Nobelist Frederick Soddy sets out the
psychology of this approach in the following words: (page 122)
"Psychologically, the economic aim of the individual is, always has been, and
probably always will be, to secure a permanent revenue independent of further
effort, proof against the passage of time and the chance of circumstance, to
support himself in old age and his family after him in perpetuity. He endeavours
to do so by accumulating so much property in the heyday of his youth that he and
his heirs may live on the interest on it in perpetuity afterwards. Economic and
social history is the conflict of this human aspiration with the laws of physics,
which make such a perpetuum mobile impossible, and reduces the problem merely to
the method by which one individual may get another individual or the community
into his debt and prevent repayment, so that the individual or community must
share the produce of their efforts with their creditor."
Something that concerns me about Douglas is the fact that he appears to wish to
superimpose his Social Credit remedies on a banking system not fundamentally
changed from the present. As I see it, the toleration of interest (reward without
risk), is in fact a means by which those who issue credit become more and more
wealthy at the expenses of the public, the value of whose money is steadily
eroded by inflation. It's certainly happening at the present time, when the
system at least in the United States appears to have been pushed to the limits,
and all signs are pointing at the moment to a very unpleasant period of
"Stagflation". Maybe this is why Muslims, who do not allow this type of
banking, are so unpopular in the Capitalist world.
Comments, anyone?
Martin Hattersley,
5929-189 St.,
EDMONTON AB CANADA T6M 2J1
Phone (780) 483-5442
e-mail <jmartinh@shaw.ca>
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