Having spent a lot of time as a fly-on-the-wall (consultant) in some of the highest echelons of the financial industry, I can say two things: 1) yep, and, 2) wow. My brain is going to take a few days to cool down from all the thought-rockets you have lit off inside of it. :)
Thanks! Usury is a topic I started getting interested in a few years ago because there is so little modern discussion of it, either on the religious side or the political. After having Brian Niemeier on my show, where we determined that student loans couldn't NOT be usury, I decided to take another look at the Summa Theologiae and it turns out Aquinas had quite the grasp on contracts!
Interesting article. One thing I don’t think I am grasping is that how the lender is committing a sin, but the debtor is not. Since they are both engaging in usury voluntarily, would they not both be committing sin (the “two-to-tango” analogy)?
Not according to Aquinas. The analogy he uses is making use of men who swear an oath to false gods, and in that case, it is lawful, since you can make good ends of the oath. What matters is what you are doing with it. Living "above your means" (whatever that might mean for a person) would be a different sin - greed, gluttony, or another delinquency - not usury. Usury is committed by the lender only.
Especially in our time, it is often a necessity to utilize usury because of other limitations or injustices that you cannot avoid. For instance, you might have to take out a student loan in order to get a medical degree, a necessary step to your profession. It may be impossible to engage with the modern economy without using a credit card.
"Accordingly we must also answer to the question in point that it is by no means lawful to induce a man to lend under a condition of usury: yet it is lawful to borrow for usury from a man who is ready to do so and is a usurer by profession; provided the borrower have a good end in view, such as the relief of his own or another's need. Thus too it is lawful for a man who has fallen among thieves to point out his property to them (which they sin in taking) in order to save his life, after the example of the ten men who said to Ismahel (Jeremiah 41:8): "Kill us not: for we have stores in the field.""
The pitfall, as I mention in the article, is the liberal view of "consent" as the test of morality. These modern views are very pervasive, even when it is obvious consent should not matter in some circumstances. The man pointing out his property to thieves is not causing the thieves to steal. Likewise a man eating food in prison is not tacitly consenting to being there. A man using a credit card to pay for his or a friend's emergency bill is not evil by using what recourse he has available, even if it is bitterly unjust, but the lender would be guilty of usury for charging him interest on the loan.
Nice try, but credit cards weren't invented until 1950 and federal student loans were invented in 1958. Technology was not created based on loans backed by personal guarantee and not real property. Real wealth-creating debt is not usury and never has been.
Promissory notes are not necessarily usury. "Store credit" isn't the store promising to repay you money with interest, and neither are bills of exchange.
Municipalities don't usually go bankrupt and have bond holders gain property in court., but that has more to do with our political system than the concept at hand.
It does give them a claim to some part of the principle, usually decided in court. But that's procedural. The point is that no PERSON in the municipality is guaranteeing the bond, and it's invested into a thing which has some value.
Having spent a lot of time as a fly-on-the-wall (consultant) in some of the highest echelons of the financial industry, I can say two things: 1) yep, and, 2) wow. My brain is going to take a few days to cool down from all the thought-rockets you have lit off inside of it. :)
Thanks! Usury is a topic I started getting interested in a few years ago because there is so little modern discussion of it, either on the religious side or the political. After having Brian Niemeier on my show, where we determined that student loans couldn't NOT be usury, I decided to take another look at the Summa Theologiae and it turns out Aquinas had quite the grasp on contracts!
Interesting article. One thing I don’t think I am grasping is that how the lender is committing a sin, but the debtor is not. Since they are both engaging in usury voluntarily, would they not both be committing sin (the “two-to-tango” analogy)?
Not according to Aquinas. The analogy he uses is making use of men who swear an oath to false gods, and in that case, it is lawful, since you can make good ends of the oath. What matters is what you are doing with it. Living "above your means" (whatever that might mean for a person) would be a different sin - greed, gluttony, or another delinquency - not usury. Usury is committed by the lender only.
Especially in our time, it is often a necessity to utilize usury because of other limitations or injustices that you cannot avoid. For instance, you might have to take out a student loan in order to get a medical degree, a necessary step to your profession. It may be impossible to engage with the modern economy without using a credit card.
"Accordingly we must also answer to the question in point that it is by no means lawful to induce a man to lend under a condition of usury: yet it is lawful to borrow for usury from a man who is ready to do so and is a usurer by profession; provided the borrower have a good end in view, such as the relief of his own or another's need. Thus too it is lawful for a man who has fallen among thieves to point out his property to them (which they sin in taking) in order to save his life, after the example of the ten men who said to Ismahel (Jeremiah 41:8): "Kill us not: for we have stores in the field.""
The pitfall, as I mention in the article, is the liberal view of "consent" as the test of morality. These modern views are very pervasive, even when it is obvious consent should not matter in some circumstances. The man pointing out his property to thieves is not causing the thieves to steal. Likewise a man eating food in prison is not tacitly consenting to being there. A man using a credit card to pay for his or a friend's emergency bill is not evil by using what recourse he has available, even if it is bitterly unjust, but the lender would be guilty of usury for charging him interest on the loan.
Nice try, but credit cards weren't invented until 1950 and federal student loans were invented in 1958. Technology was not created based on loans backed by personal guarantee and not real property. Real wealth-creating debt is not usury and never has been.
Promissory notes are not necessarily usury. "Store credit" isn't the store promising to repay you money with interest, and neither are bills of exchange.
Municipalities don't usually go bankrupt and have bond holders gain property in court., but that has more to do with our political system than the concept at hand.
It does give them a claim to some part of the principle, usually decided in court. But that's procedural. The point is that no PERSON in the municipality is guaranteeing the bond, and it's invested into a thing which has some value.
What's your point?