| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Re: Definition of usury. | | Date: | Tuesday, July 1, 2008 16:13:43 (-0600) | | From: | Wallace Klinck <wmklinck @....ca>
|
| In reply to: | Message 5436 (written by william_b_ryan) |
Inflation of financial prices is a violation of natural law.
Unrepayable and exponentially accumulating debt is a consequence of
false conventions of financial cost-accountancy. Debt under the
present financial system is both inevitable and unavoidable. It is
ultimately financially unrepayable and leads to crises of liquidity
wherein foreclosures by the lenders upon the pledged assets of the
borrowers are an intrinsic characteristic of the existing financial
system. The consequential, and undeniably intended, result of this
reality is the concentration and centralization of both economic and
political power--a process which advances at an accelerating and, one
might even say breathtaking, rate in the modern world. In a Social
Credit dispensation price inflation would not exist, nor would there
be need for overall consumer debt. The lending "business" (if one
can accord to it a name of such respect) essentially would be
terminated so far as consumers are concerned. Producers would be able
to recover their entire financial costs from consumers who would at
all times have sufficient financial income potentially to claim the
product of industry and provide, thereby, for the liquidation of all
financial costs of production within each "cycle" of production. In a
Social Credit dispensation, this discussion with all its sophistries
would be irrelevant. Would we not be better disposed to devote our
energies to the dispersion of information regarding Social Credit
principles and policies amongst the citizens, professional and lay, of
our nations? As Social Crediters, we are concerned with beneficial
alternatives, not with conformance to the existing order of false
values and destructive policies. In Christian theological terms, we
seek the Kingdom of 'God--not obeisance to the dispensation of the
Anti-Christ. In less dramatic and more prosaic terms, if one prefers,
we seek good over bad. While, as has been said, it pays to understand
one's adversaries, it also is not helpful to become so obsessed with,
or immersed in, the activities and policies of one's adversaries as
to neglect the positive aspects of one's own goals and well-being.
On conspiracies: A conspiracy occurs when two or more people engage
in some activity while being less than candid with others concerning
its actual nature, either for selfish interest or, conceivably, even
for some intended altruistic end. Conspiracy not only exists but
abounds throughout society at various levels of activity and
consciousness. One might say, from practical experience and
observation, that the political process is rife with, perhaps the
apotheosis of, conspiracy. Being a quest for power, that is, in the
existing order of things, simply the "nature of the beast." I recall,
if memory serves correctly, once hearing the Roman senator Cicero
cited as declaring that politicians were not born but excreted.
Cicero was situated so as to have a rather graphic and realistic view
of the circumstances prevailing during his time--and circumstances do
not appear to have improved with the passage of time. There are petty
conspiracies and grand conspiracies (which may be also, of course,
either petty or grand follies)--those which affect a few and those
which concern the destiny of civilizations. Our concern is to
understand and identify policies, good and bad, to locate their
sources, if possible and if necessary, and to deal with them
appropriately and accordingly.
Sincerely
Wally
On 1-Jul-08, at 10:40 AM, william_b_ryan@yahoo.com wrote:
> 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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> at
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