QatzelOk wrote:(Some of the defintions add "exorbitant" or "high interest"... but these are attempts to judge which interest charges are too high, which dictionaries aren't qualified to do as their definitions are static.)
OK, so as I surmised, you are talking about any lending at interest, and decline to distinguish between saving money and issuing money to lend, or between consensual private borrowing and compulsory, tax-based public borrowing, or between loans undertaken to fund productive investment and loans undertaken to meet arbitrary and unjustly imposed liabilities, or to make any other relevant distinctions -- i.e., the usual Marxist evasions of the relevant facts.
In the West, we are used to usury being the MO of the controlling classes, much like farm animals see the use of the dog and surrounding fencing as a sign that the farmer has full control over his cattle.
No, the MO of the controlling class, in the West as everywhere else, is
privilege, especially private ownership of land. You don't have to borrow from anyone if you would rather not pay interest; but you have no choice but to pay landowners for permission to exist on the earth's surface.
To see what "interest payments on loans" have done to the West, you can look at the other meaning of "interest" - as in "I would be very interested in helping you."
Which loans? Unlike you, I am willing to make the relevant distinctions.
Qaddafi was putting a Bank of Africa that would have charged NO INTEREST on loans. This is the model of traditional Islamic Banking.
Which results in the uniform poverty and stagnation seen in all majority-Muslim countries that are not floating on oil.
Rather than charging interest, the creditee is actually INTERESTED in the success of the person he lends to. Perhaps in exchange for the loan, the creditor will share profits until the loan is paid back, or the bank will retain a certain percentage control of the created entity.. until the loan is paid back.
It's true that equity financing has certain advantages over debt financing, but it also has disadvantages, like making the funder more dependent on the fundee's success. People have perfectly sound reasons for preferring one or the other.
This means that, while the loan is being repaid, the bank HAS AN INTEREST in the loan-created entity's success. The bank want the creditee to be successful. He has an interest.
And likewise has an interest in
preventing the success of his competitors...
So the idea that "interest" is re-defined into "profits taken by mandatory tip"... means that the bank has no real interest in the success of the creditee.
Wrong. Defaulted loans are costly to the lender even if the collateral is adequate.
In a world where only strangers from another culture have money or power to share with you.... the only interest this usury-exploiting group has in you is the money they will extort from you when you are desperate.
If you don't want to pay interest, don't borrow. Simple.
The powerful institutions will only HELP YOU if they can rake in some unearned money in the process.
Someone who lends their savings earns interest (part of which is compensation for risk) by allocating their purchasing power to someone who thinks they have a better use for it. That is quite different from a commercial bank exercising a
privilege of
creating purchasing power
de novo -- i.e., increasing the money supply -- in order to charge interest on it.
Usury defines the Western banking system, and the Western banking system DECIDES how everyone lives their lives.
Garbage. It is
privilege -- of which private bankster privilege is only one (and not the most important) form -- that determines how everyone lives their lives, because
it forcibly removes their rights and makes them into others' private property. You can
choose -- as I have -- not to be a debtor. You can't choose not to use land, except by dying.
USURY DEFINES MODERN EXISTENCE
Garbage. You can simply choose not to go into debt. You can't choose not to use land, and if you want to participate in society, you can't choose not to use IP. Try to find a willingness to know that fact.
* Housing: suburban mortgage
The only reason people have to get mortgages to buy houses is to pay for the land, and the only reason land is so expensive is the subsidy to its ownership. In some US cities, land is so cheap that any intelligent working person can buy a livable house for a few months' median after-tax wages, in cash.
* Transportation: suburban Car loans
Buy a used car for cash, like I do, or use public transit, like I have often done. Problem solved.
* Education: Student Loans (USA)
* Health Care: End of life bankruptcy (USA)
* Defense: Trillions and trillions of debt (USA)
Those are all specifically American, and result from imposition of arbitrary and unjust liabilities. The fact that money is borrowed to meet those liabilities is not the source of the liabilities. Try to find a willingness to know that fact.
So usury is a lot more than an accounting trick to rip off illiterate people who don't understand math.
But as a factor in ordinary working people's lives, it's
largely that. Millions of Americans are carrying astronomical amounts of credit card debt at ruinous interest. No one forced them to buy all that stuff on credit. They were just stupid.
It's the foundation of Western society, and it continues to warp the way we live - forcing us into car payments and suburban bungalows, and flooding trapped suburbanites with Usury-funded propaganda.
More garbage. I've owned half a dozen cars, and never paid interest to buy any of them. What I've had to pay interest for was
land, because I need to live on the earth's surface.
Usury is so powerful, Truth, that it prevents you from seeing all the evidence on this page of this thread.
You have only made claims, not offered evidence.
By funding most of our media, USURY has made us unable to see the world around us for how it really is.
It is
privilege -- especially copyright monopolies and broadcast spectrum allocations -- that funds the corporate-owned media, not interest, and I will thank you to remember it.
Instead, we just want to spend all our money on magic beans.
Speak for yourself.
Imagine knowing the power of media to manipulate and brainwash, and then watching it anyways. Usury has done quite a job on some people's heads with their captured media.
For many years, I did not have a TV in the house, didn't listen to the radio, etc. That was a
choice. But I had no choice about whether to pay someone for their permission to live on the earth's surface.
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