| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Definition of usury. | | Date: | Sunday, June 29, 2008 10:24:07 (-0700) | | From: | Joe Thomson <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
|
(Martin wrote, quoting from R H Tawney's "Religion and the Rise of
Capitalism" :-) "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 pound of flesh."
-------------------------------------------------
(Joe asks:- ) Wouldn't the money the Banks now PAY their depositors as
interest on their deposits meet Tawney's description of "pure interest" and
be the "essence of usury" by his definition?
On a typical term deposit the interest is certain regardless of whether the
Bank is gaining or losing in its business activities. It's a fixed payment
stipulated in advance. And since there is now Deposit Insurance coverage
to stipulated amounts per deposit, by staying within those limits per
deposit
there is virtually no risk to the 'creditor', (depositor ~ if Bank deposits
are not 'bailments' in law but are classed as 'debts' of the Banks instead,
as was discussed on here some time ago).
So are we all committing some "unlawful" sin by RECEIVING "usury" on our
deposits?
----- 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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