Re:Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah
by nickik on Friday September 20, 2019 @12:44PM
(#21028670)
> Even loans against production are dangerous and eventually lead to debt peonage and wealth concentration, as we have seen time and time again, from roman times onward.
> The problem is usury, and there is a long, historical argument about it that is completely ignored in the west. This is because history is written by the victors, and the usurers won. We are all usurers (or aspiring usurers) now.
You can say 'it was always like this' as much as you want, that doesn't make it true.
Not a single society that didn't have 'usury' ever developed a middle class, human rights, a welfare state and most other things in modernity. The reason the 'usurers' have won is because it is a far superior system and no society that has experiance it actually goes back to the old system.
People like to complain and complain, but when somebody actually tries to remove these insitutions from modern society its a total failure. As we have seen with different communist and other revolutions.
In fact broad access to credit was a major driver for the industrial revolution and for the modern world. It didn't lead to wealth concentration but rather to a broad wealth explosion.
You can say 'it was always like this' as much as you want, that doesn't make it true.
Not a single society that didn't have 'usury' ever developed a middle class, human rights, a welfare state and most other things in modernity. The reason the 'usurers' have won is because it is a far superior system and no society that has experiance it actually goes back to the old system.
People like to complain and complain, but when somebody actually tries to remove these insitutions from modern society its a total failure. As we have seen with different communist and other revolutions.
In fact broad access to credit was a major driver for the industrial revolution and for the modern world. It didn't lead to wealth concentration but rather to a broad wealth explosion.