Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2026 Poal.co

282

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

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (25).
[–] [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?