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Comment by Lamad1234 | Hacker News Reader

Religious nutbags from olden times weren't all that nuts to ban usury!!!

Thomas Aquinas described usury as the unlawful attempt to charge someone for the use of time itself.

Aristotle called it the "unnatural birth of money from money".

Religions who ban usury (now or in the past) only did so for "one's own kind", sometimes leaving theological ambiguity as to whether you are allowed to charge those of a different faith. We might call it hypocrisy.

To Artistotle, we would say today that his notion of the "barrenness" of money is illogical - other assets that don't bear "offspring", such as houses and land, could generate rent, so too could money.

> Thomas Aquinas described usury as the unlawful attempt to charge someone for the use of time itself.

Aquinas also does not seem to mention being rewarded for risk in a commercial/investment venture (AFAICT):

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3078.htm

Ezra Pound says “a charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production.”

Of course, Ezra Pound was a proper and proud fascist.

I don't think he was quite as proud after the second world war, when he avoided prosecution for treason by claiming insanity.

> Religions who ban usury (now or in the past) only did so for "one's own kind"

Not the case for islam, it's banned for all, regardless of being an 'in-group' or 'out-group'.

And the closest financial instrument similar to charging interest that's allowed is basically the lender buying it and selling shares of the thing to you at a markup with installments, meaning that they are sharing the risk with you.

> selling shares of the thing to you at a markup with installments

Islamic banking has provided several workarounds to accommodate financial transactions without charging explicit interest.

> Aristotle called it the "unnatural birth of money from money"

In a Malthusian economy, i.e. zero real growth, a condition which characterizes most of antiquity, this makes sense. Rulers borrowing to take a calculated risk usually meant conquest, i.e. violently taking others' stuff.

The economic and moral calculus changes in a positive-sum game, where risk can increase the size of the pie for all. So some of this variance may be explained by whether the thinker lived in a stable or growing era.

> other assets that don't bear "offspring", such as houses and land, could generate rent

Financial yield traces its roots directly to crop yield. (The grain markets in Ancient Rome are a great example of markets working without stable conceptions of money and banking [1].)

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/grain-market-in-the-rom...

But a house is not consumed during its ordinary use. The point of the Aristotelians is that money is more like a bottle of wine: You can't simultaneously charge for its use and expect to get it back, because whenever you use it, it's used up (hence, "usury").

In modern society money isn't "used up". Quite the opposite. The act of lending money actually creates more money since every $1 minted lives on the balance sheets of banks many times over.

Modern money is debt. Every dollar is borrowed, pretty much. Money is created by borrowing, and destroyed by paying back the loan.

A house is absolutely consumed in ordinary use. It is just a slow process. Paint fades over time, the roof needs repairs. It is generally seen as worthwhile to keep a house in good repair (except in Japan where they sometimes rebuild new every 20 years - I'm not sure how this works but it might be insightful to look at this exception). I've seen houses that have been abandoned (generally a farm that sold out to a larger farm and so the house isn't needed) - in just a few years the house is clearly falling apart just because of a few little maintenance issues not being taken care of.

A car need to be consumed in ordinary use. There are people still driving the car they bought new in 1968 (or whatever year), and the car looks and drives like it is less than a year old. However the amount of labor required to keep a car at this level isn't generally seen as worth it and so the average car is about 12 years old and obviously not like new at that age.

>To Artistotle, we would say today that his notion of the "barrenness" of money is illogical

From my perspective Aristotle is spot on. In fact, you just keep listing more examples how he is correct. All those things you listed can only generate an income by having another person pay for it. The house is dead, the people living inside it generate the income that pays your rental payments.

The definition of "usury" isn't as straight forward as 'charging interest'. Even in the time of Jesus of Nazareth charging interest was not unheard of (Matthew 25:27; Luke 19:23), and opportunity cost was recognized in the Middle Ages (see Paris, 1200 by Baldwin).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

We tend to focus on lending money for commercial purposes, but in the ancient world most folks were probably peasant farmers, and they generally needed to borrow / be lent to because the crops failed: charging them interest in their hour of need would be against the virtue of charity.

That's still pretty much how agriculture works today.

You borrow from the landlord, the rich or the bank, to pay for seeds, fertilizer, machinery, energy, labor etc and pray you don't get hit by weather, pests, disease, market price fluctuations. If all goes well you pay it back.

If it doesn't govt steps in, to the keep you(ie the banks and rich people) afloat. See the size Farming Subsidies and Protections world wide.

When they don't step in farms shutdown.

there's lending, and then there's predatory lending. let's not paint everything with the same brush.

While true, that’s also not that helpful. Where is the line?

Somewhere in the middle.

What about risky borrowers?

I like to think the parable of jesus overturning the money changers' tables was because they were the equivalent to payday loans. here's money to pay for new goats/lambs with the promise that you pay me back in full plus some meat for my family vs here's some money for 3 goats and 3 lambs in the promise that you pay me back in full plus 4 goats and 4 lambs or it'll be a real shame if my nephew has to come and pay a visit.

The problem isn't that there isn't a common-sense distinction between the extremes; it's attempting to define the crossover point (presumably for the purposes of a "bright line" rule in law/policy/norms). Defining how much interest should qualify as usury is a classic "paradox of the heap" [0]; which may be a reason by some faith traditions simply forbade lending at interest altogether.

An interesting alternative to consider, is money that intentionally depreciates value at a fixed rate ("demurrage" [1]). In theory, this would incentivize lending at zero interest (assuming relative price stability for real goods, which is easier said than done).

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_(currency)

> An interesting alternative to consider, is money that intentionally depreciates value at a fixed rate ("demurrage" [1]).

This is exactly property of coins (gold, silver or copper). Even without debasement (like clippage) they were loosing value as they were worn out as a result normal usage. Money changers were exchanging worn out/damaged/clipped coins at current market value minus some comission.

> jesus overturning the money changers' tables was because they were the equivalent to payday loans

Jesus apparently didn't appreciated that a Jew coming from say Alexandia or Gallile had been bringing a bunch of coins of different origin, issuance, often clipped or destroyed by use... Charging 4-8 percent (kolbon) for exchanging used and foreign coins into new shekels required by Temple wasn't excesive. It is on par on charges for foreign purchases by today's banks.

Temple services (purification, healing) were on the other hand prohibitively expensive while Jesus provided them for free...

Many read that passage as Jesus against doing those activities in the temple, if they had been in the market outside he would have been okay.

The funny thing to me was that Jesus was only like 17 or so when he did this, if memory serves. It always seemed to me like a tantrum thrown by a teenager getting praised for being an asshat. Prior to that, he was a dick to his stepdad by essentially telling him "you're not my real dad". And these were the events canonized, so what other kinds of things were left out that these were the ones that were selected as the high notes?

He would have been in his 30s by any reading of the bible. (Luke 3 clearly says about 30, and also is clearly the start of his ministry)

Historically there were many Jewish people not happy about this happening in the temple. I doubt Jesus was the only one driving them away from time to time, they just kept coming back to the temple.

The rest of your post is just made up based on trying your best to interrupt things in the worst possible light it is not more reasonable than believing anything else.

"Why have you done this to us?" "Why are you looking for me? Do you not know I'm in my father's house?" => "You're not my real dad"

It's not made up. It's just modernized. And he was 12 according to NIV

The subject here is chasing the money changers out of the temple which the NIV also says would have happened after he was 30. There was a short incident where he said things like you said when he was 12, but that is a different situation.

How much interest you charge, and if you are doing it say to help people trough university, so that they can benefit society and or humanity, versus if you want people to promote people getting lavish people houses, wanting them to fail so that you can get other peoples houses.

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