Interest breaks Capitalism
So, one way that I know, for sure, the US is in no way a Christian nation is that all over the place in the US, everywhere money is being loaned, interest is being charged. Jesus certainly never went off on the subjects of abortion or sex before marriage, but charging interest made him flip over some tables in a temple because he was so mad.
Jesus was right to be mad, because charging interest *breaks* capitalism. Here’s the basic problem. In our system, money is a pointer to value. The little bits of green paper have no actual value but you can use them to buy various goods, so they are backed by all they can buy.
When you charge interest, you are doing something with the pieces of paper which cannot be matched in the real world. Very few real world activities generate more actual value just by holding a certain amount of value – farming being the one exception. But, because you’re making the accounting system do something that doesn’t match reality, *trouble* ensues. We’ve talked about in previous episodes how the great depression was caused by a failure in the accounting system – and that’s the kind of failure you can run into.
March 12th, 2024 at 11:41 am
Actually, the Jews in the Temple were moneychangers. They charged a premium for changing one form or currency to another. Jesus was upset because they were conducting business in the Temple, which was considered a Holy Place, not a business location.
If I take 10,000 tokens and purchase product, I can sell that product in 1 year and from the profits double my tokens to 20,000. If someone loans me the 10,000 tokens at 10% interest for 1 year, those Tokens cost me 1,000 Tokens. At the end of the year I will have a profit of 9,000 Tokens. If I didn’t have 10,000 Tokens and didn’t borrow them with interest, I would make no profit that year. Interest is a cost of doing business. Interest IS a part of Capitalism.
Muslims don’t charge or pay interest, instead they pay fees. It works the same way, it is just a different label.
I am really surprised, as intelligent as you are that you can’t grasp how monetary systems work.
March 12th, 2024 at 4:44 pm
I think you miss that money systems do *not work correctly*.
For example, during the great depression, we still had all the steel, all the food, all the *Everything* but people were homeless and starving because the money system had failed.
Money is supposed to track real world value as a pointer to it to simplify transactions. However, if one offers interest that does not align with anything that happens in the real world, it *cannot* do that and sooner or later reality and the paper tracking system get out of anlignment and trouble ensues.
I am surprised that you haven’t yet considered that I might see something you don’t, and instead think that I don’t grasp how the current system is engineered.
However, I do thank you for staying engaged in the dialog 😉