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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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[–] • 1 pt

Anywhere money is a true scarce commodity. 1) It's too valuable to lend. 2) Deflationary pressure means your enterprise may have trouble paying back the principle in the future. 3) Money is so valuable that penalties for non-payment are harsh.

So in a system where money is more valuable than a place to live and quite often more valuable than the food you eat up to starvation, you have alternatives to money. You have more barter and indentured servitude. You have slavery and starvation.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

It sound like you are making the case for lending if not actual usury, yes? "Cheap"er money prevents slavery and starvation essentially.

[–] • 0 pt

Yes but usary and money are connected. Extremely soft money like the USD requires usary both practically and from a moral standpoint as well. It's not the usary that's immoral. It's the money. This is a situational ethics argument, like killing in war I suppose. Notice we don't actually see usary in collateral, which are the hard assets backing the loan. The bank doesn't come along mid agreement and say "now you owe me two new cars". When money is a hard asset, especially a deflating one, usary would resemble such a contract.