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Perhaps its my lack of perspective having lived only the in the US, but I'm trying to get my head around how an economic system without usury/lending would function. Perhaps someone can provide an example?

And, yes, perhaps its not fair to equate lending with usury as the common definition of the latter is essentially that its lending with unreasonably high interest rates. But that definition is squishy. What is "unreasonable"? Surely some interest is warranted as the lender is taking risk?

Looking forward to the comments on this one. :D

Perhaps its my lack of perspective having lived only the in the US, but I'm trying to get my head around how an economic system without usury/lending would function. Perhaps someone can provide an example? And, yes, perhaps its not fair to equate lending with usury as the common definition of the latter is essentially that its lending with unreasonably high interest rates. But that definition is squishy. What is "unreasonable"? Surely some interest is warranted as the lender is taking risk? Looking forward to the comments on this one. :D

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[–] • 2 pts

Up until 1515, when the pope allowed collecting interest on loans, Europe ran without usury. I'm not saying that there wasn't some usury here and there, but it was the Medici pope, Leo X, who opened the floodgates to it. There was also very strong and outspoken opposition to usury in the American colonies. All the Church fathers opposed usury. Jesus opposed usury. Basically, usury is money breeding money. This was abhorent to earlier religious leaders.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

So I did some researching on that one and most sources say there was lending before 1515 and the money lenders had notoriously high rates. The papal bull allowed "charitable" pawns to do lending at a reasonable rate so as to undercut the high-interest lenders.

But maybe the Pope had other intentions and the above is a revisionist or overly-trusting assessment of the motive?