For our next meeting, our local Distributist club is reading selections from that usury book I told you about. Selections, in fact, selected by yours truly. So if you can’t make the meeting, and are too timid to read the whole book, you can still read a few pithy pages.
The reading: Selections from Usury: A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View
(To prevent confusion, in case anyone attending the meeting gets their copy here, I’m leaving the PDF formatted for letter paper. Usually I’d want a more screen-friendly format, but that doesn’t print well.)
It is only intelligent energy that can produce wealth. Even the natural resources must be subdued and shaped by intelligent energy to be of service to man. Trees do not betake themselves into the form of houses. Land does not transform itself into farms and gardens. Coal does not come to our fires without hands. Ore is not iron, nor is clay pottery. They must be carefully manipulated by the intelligent laborer.
The usurer hands his goods to another to build the barns and keep for him, while he is free from its care; and, more, he requires of his victim not only that he shall preserve, resisting all decay, but that he shall actually pay him for the privilege.
The island upon which New York stands was bought from the Indians for the value of twenty-four dollars by Peter Minuits in 1626. Yet, if the purchaser had put his twenty-four dollars at interest, where he could have added it to the principal at the rate of seven per cent., the accumulation would now exceed the total value of the entire city and county of New York.
-
astine says:
It seems to me that if the book is as repetitive as those excerpts it should be very boring. It seems to build its entire argument upon one single fallacy: that a fair price can be determined by anything other than the values and needs of the individuals involved in the transaction.
While the author is correct in establishing that the act of taking on a loan is sometimes a benefit for the loaner, he fails to make the case that this somehow renders it unjust for him to make the loan contingent on the payment of interest. This is especially the case when it is the borrower who decides whether to accept the loan or not. If care for goods really was enough compensation for the difficulty of making goods, both fungible and non-fungible, widely availably, then they would be offered at such a price.
In short, who is this man to quarrel with a price, that many billions of individuals have accepted, in full knowledge of its consequences.
However, I’m repeating myself I believe, and this may just be a waste of breath.
October 10th, 2007 at 3:37 am -
Bill Powell says:
Well, Andrew, it wouldn’t be fair not to refer any chance visitor to our earlier discussion, where you make these objections with a greater measure of length and eloquence.
While I agree that the book is not entitled to eternal fame for any literary merits, I do think you’d be hard pressed to reduce all his arguments to the “fallacy” you mention. But these selections weren’t intended to be an exhaustive argument anyhow, rather talking points for a live meeting. You can always read the book if you really want to address the arguments directly.
But I do want to keep the discussion in one place on that other page, if you want to keep it going. I’m also in the process of switching to new wiki software, which will make it easier to edit that page and summarize our points a bit for the faint of heart.
Thanks for the comment!
-
astine says:
Aha, there is an entire book!