Makes more sense if you think about it as being paid to forgo consumption. Your being paid not for having money, but for not using it right away and letting someone else use it instead.

Of course, if no one else has anything better to do with it, the value of this "service" drops to zero, as seems to be happening now.

Not weird at all. You lend your money to the bank, the bank operates with them and you get paid for that. Can you give me your money so that I invest with them and I will give you less what you gave me in 10 years? Thanks!

Philosophically yes, but realistically not. If I can borrow 10$ to earn an extra dollar, why would I object to paying a 0.5$ interest?

When you loan money you risk it. Unless you are under the FDIC insurance limit, the bank is allowed to lose your money by lending it out wrong. FDIC insurance is actually a progressive redistribution program because people with more money pay into the system without receiving proportional protection.

You're getting paid by the bank because you're effectively loaning the bank money

The word is "usury".

> Originally, usury meant the charging of interest of any kind and, in some Christian societies and even today in many Islamic societies, charging any interest at all was considered usury. Some of the earliest known condemnations of usury come from the Vedic texts of India. Similar condemnations are found in religious texts from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

Our system prints money for complex and highly debatable reasons, so what a bank pays in interest to its depositors is rarely ever enough to offset all the inflation they create.

It's not "getting paid" so much as loss mitigation.

The modern racket of fiat money and lending at interest (which all of the Abrahamic faiths prohibit or restrict) is an assault on the plebes.

People like the game too much to care.

I think philosophically this has merit (see Riba[0]). Economically, I feel like it makes perfect sense to get paid for providing a service (i.e. loaning money).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba

Well not simply for having money, but for not spending it immediately. By saving you sacrifice immediate benefits for future ones, and you get money for it because you lend your money to people who are willing to pay to spend it now.

This is the essence of all investing, including entrepreneurship.

Why is that weird? Having money allows you to loan the money to people that don't have it, and they're gonna pay you for the privileged. Or, in another words, money you get today is worth more than money you get tomorrow. Both of these are very intuitive concepts.

I don't think they are paid for having money. When saving money in a bank, you don't have the money. The bank has it, and you are being paid for letting them have your money.

No your being paid for the use of your money - the banks lend this out, this is how fractional reserve banking works.

Is it weirder that this was essentially the case for decades upon decades?

Not “having”, but lending it for some time to other people.