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djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:45:28 JST djsumdog

Debt: The First 5,000 Years (page 206)
In conversation about 11 days ago from djsumdog.com permalink
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1. The rise of rural usury was itself a sign of a growing free peasantry (there had been no point in making loans to serfs, since they had nothing to repossess). It accompanied the rise of commercial farming, urban craft guilds, and the “commercial revolution” of the High Middle Ages, all of which finally brought Western Europe to a level of economic activity comparable to that long since considered normal in other parts of the world. The Church quickly came under considerable popular pressure to do something about the problem, and at first, it did try to tighten the clamps. Existing loopholes in the usury laws were systematically closed, particularly the use of mortgages. These latter began as an expedient: as in medieval Islam, those determined to dodge the law could simply present the money, claim to be buying the debtor’s house or field, and then “rent” the same house or field back to the debtor until the principal was repaid. In the case of a mortgage, the house was in theory not even purchased but pledged as security, but any income from it accrued to the lender. In the eleventh century, this became a favorite trick of monasteries. In 1148, it was made illegal: henceforth, all income was to be subtracted from the principal. Similarly, in 1187, merchants were forbidden to charge higher prices when selling on credit—the Church thereby going much further than any school of Islamic law ever had. In 1179, usury was made a mortal sin, and usurers were excommunicated and denied Christian burial.122 Before long, new orders of itinerant friars like the Franciscans and Dominicans organized preaching campaigns, traveling town to town, village to village, threatening moneylenders with the loss of their eternal souls if they did not make restitution to their victims. All this was echoed by a heady intellectual debate in the newly founded universities, not so much as to whether usury was sinful and illegal, but precisely why. Some argued that it was theft of another’s material possessions; others that it constituted a theft of time, charging others for something that belonged only to God. Some held that it embodied the sin of Sloth, since like the Confucians, Catholic thinkers usually held that a merchant’s profit could only be justified as payment for his labor (i.e., in transporting goods to wherever they were needed), whereas interest accrued even if the lender did nothing at all. Soon the rediscovery of Aristotle, who returned in Arabic translation, and the influence of Muslim sources like Ghazali and Ibn Sina, added new arguments: that treating money as an end in itself defied its true purpose, that charging interest was unnatural, in that it treated mere metal as if it were a living thing that could breed or bear fruit.123 But as the Church authorities soon discovered, when one opens up such debates, it’s very hard to keep a lid on them. Soon, new popular religious movements were appearing everywhere, and many took up the same direction so many had in late Antiquity, not only challenging commerce but questioning the very legitimacy of private property. Most of these movements were labeled heresies and violently suppressed, but some of their arguments were taken up by members of the mendicant orders themselves. By the thirteenth century, the great intellectual debate was between the Franciscans and the Dominicans over “apostolic poverty”—basically, over whether Christianity could be reconciled with property of any sort.
  https://djsumdog.com/media/fe/0f/19/fe0f19eaa15c85f7326595b824287aca6de80f7fbbb8fc01d82dec951de59a7a.png
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 02:56:21 JST djsumdog
  in reply to
  
  Got into a debate with a friend about this; specifically that Catholicism/Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths were morally opposed to charging any type of interest in the 1100s. It was considered a moral sin to use money as an instrument for making money by itself, without adding any real work of value.
  
  It was a counter by him using the Parable of the Talents:
  
  https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Matthew%2025:14%E2%80%9330&version=nrsv
  
  The master at the end, tells the man who saved his money that he should have at least invested it in a bank. But even here, the other two servants used their money to trade real goods and return on actual value.
  
  It also goes to show what the canonized bible, and what Christians have believed, has differed wildly in each century. The Christianity of 1100 or 1300 or 1400 would be unrecognizable to the evangelicals and reformed protestants of today.
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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    oremus Bible Browser : Matthew 25:14–30
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 03:38:17 JST djsumdog
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  - Flick ??
  I read it years ago and, at the time, thought it was the best non-fiction book I've ever read. Grabber goes into the history of money, debt, war and slavery (all intrinsically linked).
  
  Over the years, there are some parts of the book I really disagree with him on, especially when it comes to him whining about student loans. Still, there is a lot of really interesting stuff in there, and the book does a good job of explaining how we've been mislead on economics in school. We're taught barter came first and then credit, when in reality credit came first (even if it meant notches on a tree) and barter only came about when civilizations fell.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  Flick ?? (flick@spinster.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 03:38:18 JST Flick ??
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  @djsumdog That sounds like it could either be dry as dust or very interesting: any view on which?
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 04:14:48 JST djsumdog
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  - Pacific NW Viking
  I'm not really talking about the current thing. I'm addressing historical moral beliefs around interest: specifically that using money as an instrument by itself to earn more money (without adding value to making something) is immoral and sinful ... I think that was a good stance to have.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  Pacific NW Viking (viking@noauthority.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 04:14:49 JST Pacific NW Viking
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  @djsumdog
  Hate the spendthrifts, not the lenders.
  It is spendthrifts in congress that has put $36 trillion in debt slavery on the shoulders of the net taxpayers.
  We can also have some hatred for the fed bankers, who were complicit by buying T-bills and mortgages.
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    http://lenders.It/
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  lainy (lain@lain.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 04:16:43 JST lainy
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  - Flick ??
  @djsumdog @Flick i really liked the book too when i read it, although by now i think it's mostly wrong. it's a well written and interesting book, though.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 04:49:33 JST djsumdog
  in reply to
  - lainy
  - Flick ??
  What parts do you think he got wrong? I'm curious because I don't think the book gets enough criticism.
  
  I'm not a fan of some of his anti-capitalist leanings or his misunderstanding of student loans. He was an academic his entire life, so they tend to never get experience about the realities of industry.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  Pacific NW Viking (viking@noauthority.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 06:36:57 JST Pacific NW Viking
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  @djsumdog
  But do you think there are negative consequences to debtors paying 3% interest, when inflation is around 3%, which is technically like an interest free loan?
  This was approximately the situation between 2011 and 2021.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 06:36:57 JST djsumdog
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  - Pacific NW Viking
  I don't think I really know enough about that to comment on it :blobcatshrug:
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 13:57:39 JST iced depresso
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  - 御園はくい
  - Flick ??
  @hakui @djsumdog @Flick barter also only happens when just going over and taking people's shit stops working (graeber.) it's not the default until someones already been trained to do it.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
  
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  御園はくい (hakui@tuusin.misono-ya.info)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 13:57:40 JST 御園はくい
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  - Flick ??
  @djsumdog @Flick barter was only for international trade (i.e. between different villages) because it's not likely you'll encounter them enough times to work out a credit system
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  御園はくい (hakui@tuusin.misono-ya.info)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 15:15:40 JST 御園はくい
  in reply to
  - iced depresso
  - Flick ??
  @icedquinn @Flick @djsumdog yes, the statement "in the beginning there was barter" is still not correct either way
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
  
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  djsumdog (djsumdog@djsumdog.com)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 15:18:36 JST djsumdog
  in reply to
  He used that analogy of how you don't ask a relative for a dime to pass the salt at dinner. I think there was something in the book about how your practice capitalism at work so you can have communism at home. He also had that story (felt more like a parable) of a father who kept track of every dollar he spend on his kid and handed him a bill. The kid paid it all off after college and never talked to his father after; an allegory for tit-for-tat versus family.
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink
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  御園はくい (hakui@tuusin.misono-ya.info)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Jun-2025 15:18:37 JST 御園はくい
  in reply to
  - lainy
  - Flick ??
  @lain @djsumdog @Flick his observation that the family level runs on credit is pretty on point though, you can't really argue against that
  
  In conversation about 11 days ago permalink

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