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Re:How this Ends by betwixthewires on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @10:38PM (#26175380)
Lending money is absolutely essential to the development of any society. Lending is not predatory by it's nature, or harmful, or destructive. The US for example would not have coast to coast and border to border high quality road and other transportation infrastructure if not for lending. This infrastructure increase the productivity of the nation, allowing that debt to be paid back, decreased the cost of transportation for everyone and increased the standard of living for everyone in the US.

Think of it like this: if you are borrowing money for anything that does not increase your productivity, you're making a mistake. If you're lending money to someone for something that does not increase their productivity, you're increasing your risk of default substantially.

It isn't about greed, fact is, sometimes people need money they don't have, and sometimes people have money they don't need at this very moment, and if both parties make a good, sound judgment, both can benefit from this scenario. Every day people make their lives better by borrowing money. The view that lending and borrowing are innately bad is a very narrow minded view, one based on ignorance of the facts of how lending works.

Re:How this Ends by spurgu on Thursday February 18, 2021 @11:44AM (#26182078)
Depends on the size of the society. If you think about it from scratch, you only need lending once society grows to about a certain threshold where you're essentially dealing with unknown people. Interest is a compensation for the risk you take, combined with the loss of investable capital during the loan period. It's quite different from helping your friend or relative build a house, along with a dozen other members of your society, with the social agreement that that friend will help you out when you are in need. Most of our societal issues I think stem from stepping above the size of our social circles.
Re:How this Ends by gher-shyu3i on Thursday February 18, 2021 @06:58AM (#26178822)
It's not ignorant, otherwise it would have been prohibited by Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, among others probably. This video is telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io2a4SOX22Y

If you want to build and prosper, you can find investors willing to put money into your project or business. Lending money is not the only way to prosperity, as evident by how we had an entire empire (the Islamic Empire) that prospered and was at the forefront of many fields, yet did not deal with interest.

People simply want the easy way out, and lending with interest is the easy way out in this case. It's intellectually lazy, and has caused destruction time and time again throughout history. But people turn a blind eye because of the relative few who stand to benefit greatly from interest, at the expense of everyone else.

How do you feel about the government being able to print money at will and devalue the dollars or euros you worked hard for? You can thank interest for that.