Editor note - sorry for the delay. Finally dealt with a court case, got my house in order, and back to it. Time to slay some foes!
That Which Is Unreal
I answer that, to take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality which is contrary to justice. In order to make this evident, we must observe that there are certain things the use of which consists in their consumption: thus we consume wine when we use it for drink and we consume wheat when we use it for food. Wherefore in such like things the use of the thing must not be reckoned apart from the thing itself, and whoever is granted the use of the thing, is granted the thing itself and for this reason, to lend things of this kind is to transfer the ownership. Accordingly if a man wanted to sell wine separately from the use of the wine, he would be selling the same thing twice, or he would be selling what does not exist, wherefore he would evidently commit a sin of injustice.
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Secunda Secunda Q78 A1
Well, dear readers. Here we are at the end of our series on usury, and it’s time for our long form post to wrap it all together.
As the first quote from the Summa shows, to charge usury in a loan is to sell something twice. We moderns have a hard time thinking of it this way - because we have divorced ourselves from the real world, we convince ourselves that money is not consumed in it’s use. That is, in a very real way it is destroyed - it is separated from the one that spent it. Thus, to charge rent (interest or even a flat fee) on it, is paying for money that the spender no longer is in possession of, and thus it is unjust.
We moderns have pithy sayings such as “It takes money to make money,” believing that money is fecund, when it is infertile grounds. We examined and saw that usury can also be either a flat fee or an interest rate - though the interest rate is obviously much more pernicious and unjust.
Again, I can’t stress this enough, money is not fertile. I don’t care how much you stare at gold coins; they won’t get up, hump each other, and make more gold. Nor are they simply just shy, and need a room. Money needs YOU. While capital helps and is necessary in some ventures, it always takes labor. Entropy is relentless, even to the trade of heavy metals. The mere trading of them will wear the weight down over time. They can be lost, stolen, etc. It takes investment of labor or resources merely to keep them, let alone increase your wealth.
Our current system is predicated on the idea that, somehow, one can always make money. Thus, if you loan money you are always entitled to receive compensation for the loan. We call this “opportunity cost” and consider it fair compensation. Yet, this only looks at what you could have made, and never at what you could have lost.
Never does anyone factor into these moral considerations possibilities of those losses. Or even that you have to often pay the bank fees simply to store your money, or if hard valuable like gold, diamonds, etc you will have to pay even more. So, it is certainly a fair point that a someone could claim that, in giving back the same amount borrowed, they’re the ones doing the service in keeping the value of your goods safe!
Further, while people say that you can always ‘make what the treasury is paying’ that doesn’t include the times that inflation rises, the value of the t-bills drops, and you’re losing money in real terms, even if not in nominal terms. Or, if forced to sell, the seller can lose in both real and nominal terms if having to do so in dire straights. So no, ‘buying treasury bills or bonds’ is not a safe, guaranteed thing, and many people over the years have lost a great deal of money doing so.
Again, only and everywhere, does the actual value of things increase if you put labor into it. Usually of a physical thing that you own. The buying and selling of speculative assets, usually non-physical in nature, are not wealth building.
As a side note - This view should be taken on everything that one has an eye on for long term wealth building - you will need to put sweat equity into it simply to maintain it’s worth. If you don’t, it will go down in value. If you ever find something where this is not the case there are a few possibilities - You are stealing someone else’s labor. You are being lied to. You are wrong and it is actually a speculation, looking like wealth building. These errors are where lives are ruined. Your own and others’.
Sadly, many people try to hide their usury. It’s easy to make up silly examples, like lending apples for a party, and asking back oranges which are more expensive. Or lending half a tank of gas, and asking for a full tank.
But, back in the Middle Ages, or in modern areas where they’re harsh against obvious usury, it can be more pernicious. You lend me a beat up car for a couple years, and I give you a newer one. Loans riddled with fees above the cost of actually lending the money.
The reality is, that if people want to get around usury laws, they simply will do their best. Which will always be better than the lawmakers, who can’t foresee everything. The only way to stop them is harsh punishments, Laws that are flexible, Judges that aren’t corrupt, and a society dedicated to ostracizing the lender. If the society is bound and determined to be ‘ruled by law, and not by man,’ IE - not comfortable giving a judge enough power to make judgment on individual cases as to if people were willfully trying to hide usury - you’ll never win.
One should quickly note that favors (loans) to friends are not usurious. They’re just often not a good idea and poorly done in our culture. We often have the assumption that the thing lent will be returned in exactly the same condition its lent out at. Often times, when lending a car, for instance, they even expect a full tank on top of it.
To me, this has always seemed predatory and more renter than friendly. If I get even a whiff of this attitude, I don’t borrow from the person ever again, no matter what my need. And I make sure I squash any bit of that expectation in people I lend to. I have items I really do rent, because they’re expensive, or I use them myself and do the work personally as a favor.
Rolling Away Assumptions
On the other hand, there are things the use of which does not consist in their consumption: thus to use a house is to dwell in it, not to destroy it. Wherefore in such things both may be granted: for instance, one man may hand over to another the ownership of his house while reserving to himself the use of it for a time, or vice versa, he may grant the use of the house, while retaining the ownership. For this reason a man may lawfully make a charge for the use of his house and, besides this, revendicate the house from the person to whom he has granted its use, as happens in renting and letting a house.
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Secunda Secunda Q78 A1
Now we get to a section of the Summa that really trips many moderns up. I think part of it is in the wording of this section. Thomas posits two contracts - in the first contract he posits a contract where the seller, lets call him Paul, sells Peter a house. Paul wants to continue living in the house for a year after the sale, and is willing to pay for this. Peter is fine with his current digs, fishing on the lake like a boss, and willing to wait. So Thomas considers this is a moral contract because, unlike money, a house is not consumed - Paul can rent the house sold to Peter, this is all cool. Peter happens.
The second contract he merely passes over - renting a house. This is if Peter is down on his luck fishing, lost the house, and simply has to rent a place from Paul. Nothing special, ho hum, and so Thomas passes this by.
We moderns seem to think that Paul giving Peter the money the money to by the house, making him pay interest on the house, taking all the risks on the house, being legally forced to buy insurance on the house… is some how… PAUL!?!?!? buying the house and renting it to Peter? WHAT!?!? Are Loans Rent??? NO! They’re obviously not. Our laws aren’t set up that way, our risk/rewards aren’t set up that way. Not a single thing is set up that way.
Yet, somehow, in our modern mind…
We say the bank owns the house.
When really, it owns us. That’s what it owns. The future labor we provide is what it owns. Usury has always, ALWAYS been equated with slavery by the Catholic Church, and, as far as I know, Islam. Because it’s a claim on our future work.
It certainly isn’t a claim on the house, though the bank can obviously claim that if it goes unpaid it will seize the house. The banks know that there are bubbles and busts. But the banks make money by selling off the loans, which are then collected by another agency, which then hopes/prays you keep being a wage slave and the bubble never bursts.
Which brings us to the business of usury. That is, usury in all business dealings and contracts.
As with the case above, we are specifically looking at a specific type of loan. This time between two parties for the purpose of being a productive loan - IE, to do something with the money that will turn a profit from which the loan can be paid back. This is permissible to do on specific business ventures or with whole companies. An example of the former would be if someone wanted to fund the development of a specific model of a Tesla, get a percentage of the profits from it, but not the whole company, which would be the latter. We almost exclusively see the latter today, but in the Middle Ages the former was much more common, with specific ventures having shares sold to interested investors willing to lend money.
The key aspect to the morality of a business loan is that the loan must be paid back from the interest. Additionally, it is morally permissible that any business goods purchased with the loan, or physical goods owned by the person lent to, be used as collateral for the loan. Just because it is permissible does not make it always moral. Putting up a million dollar house as collateral, for a $250k loan, and the lender getting to keep all the sale of the house (and not give back the excess of the loan) is morally reprehensible and sinful.
So, from here there are multiple ways to structure the payments of the loan. The loan could be paid back flatly, no profit, if the lender is just wanting to fund out of charity. Or, simply a fee on top of the loan to make money. Or an ownership stake, taking a percentage of profit, for the life of the venture or business. Again, each of these is permissible, but excessively high fees or percentages may be sinful in themselves.
One main reason that the investors pushed for usurious loans was that they got greedy and lazy. They didn’t want to have to invest the time and care to investigate the character and virtue of the people they were making the loans to - to make sure that the people were who they said they were, could do the work, and wouldn’t just take the money and run. A loan was in those days, and I would argue should continue to be now, a personal thing. Even in business, you’re entering into something where you should be in a close personal relationship depending on the size of the loan and how much is being risked.
A good moral rule of thumb is that, the bigger the stakes you have to make, the bigger you should have to lose if things go south.
Weep, It Comes for Ye
The Jews were forbidden to take usury from their brethren, i.e., from other Jews. By this we are given to understand that to take usury from any man is evil simply, because we ought to treat every man as our neighbor and brother, especially in the state of the Gospel, whereto all are called.
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Secunda, Secunda Q78 A1
As the businesses founded on Usury begin their downward drift (and *cough* less CIA funding *cough*), they find themselves ever forced to become a larger and larger usurious beast. Exponential growth, honestly, demands that they do.
Because the biggest usurer is the government, and it demands that the big corps, and everyone, pay their fair share.
It demands that there be ever more growth where there should have been none to being with. So, to get that, the easiest tactic is to steal from where there is growth. Increased taxes and regulations in society. More labor laws. More oversight to enforce said laws. More bureaucracy.
While that might sound like today. That was the 30’s. Then came convincing women to join the work force, so two income taxes. Lower wages and higher margins for companies means more usury. The reformed immigration laws again lowered wages for head of households in the 60’s, the 70’s/80’s inflation helped sucker punch the worker while the debts were inflated away and we went off the gold standard. In the 80’s the unions were finally broke by Regan/Thatcher, bringing the worker under heel, so that he could finally submit to 5 year auto loans and 30 year mortgages perpetually, forever and ever amen.
Then we started feeding our children to the Usurious Beast through student loans. When people got the idea that the loans were for worthless paper, the government passed laws making them one-sided so you couldn’t get out of them, even for those that had already taken them out.
Having enslaved the whole family at this point, the Usurious Beast began to worry. Where would it’s next meal be? But then, it had the brilliant idea! Start commoditizing everything, unload cheap Chinese goods on the US, and export jobs! So, the unbelievable happened. Where before I am old enough to remember being paid to take surveys, now my information is harvested and sold. Where water was cheap and you could find it publicly, now it’s bottled and sold. Goods are made to break and be replaced. We are the product, now feeding AI.
If you want to know why the government wants to regulate all sales… Yes, part is control. But part is because, eventually, they must. They must make money on every sale, trade, transaction, or thing you own, sooner or later, or the Usurious Beast will starve.
But, until then, and this whole time…. Oh, how she howls and rampages! For, dear readers, she is a beast made for war!
Usury is destructive on the individual and community level because it literally pits those individuals at odds with each other, to suppress the other. Often times it means paying thugs to enforce the loans, or using police if the loans are lawful within the state.
But, on the geopolitical scale, usury is used to steal the excess productivity from the middle and lower classes in order to fund war machines. It can be used against the upper class, but usually they have enough power and influence that they are able to avoid it, and instead are used to extract wealth from the middle and lower classes. This has historically been the case in every land where Usury has gained traction, and The Catholic Church has not been able to suppress it or keep the nobility in check.
While it would be an unjust and gross over-simplification, modern history can partially be read as a function of letting usury laws loosen to fund wars, they get out of hand, revolution, rinse, repeat. Sometimes not in that order, hilariously.
Oh, and we can’t forget the predatory lending of the Bank of International Settlement either. Making financial transactions between nations into a weapon in and of themselves.
All of which is to say that the globalists use Usury for the Machining of Men. When consumption happens on an industrial scale, consumerism, and war…
We get McDonalds in every corner. A Starbucks in every country. Mexican food that isn’t Mexican, and Irish pubs that aren’t Irish. And it’s already happened at such a scale that it might be too late for some to go back. The globalists use the usury, to fund commodification, to destroy culture, in a doom loop of expanding proportions.
How many Irish still speak Celtic? And read it? Do we have nations? Built by families, then the blood ties to tribes, communities, and the nation?
Do we have traditions? Cultures? Something to differentiate us, significantly, from someone a state away? Half a country away? In Europe? If not, why not? What are we living for?
Turning Away, Towards the Light
Further, Property acquired from usury does not belong to the person who paid usury, but to the person who bought it. Yet he that paid usury has a certain claim on that property just as he has on the other goods of the usurer. Hence it is not prescribed that such property should be assigned to the persons who paid usury, since the property is perhaps worth more than what they paid in usury, but it is commanded that the property be sold, and the price be restored, of course according to the amount taken in usury.
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Secunda, Secunda Q78 A3
Now we look at the societal affects of believing that money - a stationary, infertile object that is consumed in its use - is fertile and makes more of itself simply by existing. When we believe such, we make the unnatural an everyday occurrence, habituating our souls to believe other untruths we may encounter in our lives, and readily believing them as well.
We will be especially prone to such lies as resemble the one we believe - those regarding infertile things being fertile. Contraception and sodomy are the easiest examples of such. The former being considered taboo in all protestant sects until the same time that we began knocking down the large walls against usury here in the early 1900’s. The latter became more accepted rather recently, in the 90’s when we commodified everything, everywhere. Correlation may not be causation, but this pattern also seems to hold true historically when looking at other Empires. When they begin taking on usury in larger amounts, the hedonism grabs hold of society, they begin not having children, having larger amounts of sodomy, and the Empire/kingdom declines.
In addition to this, each society seems that takes on Usury seems to take its founding myths to their logical ends. For us, it’s an odd mix of corporate sponsored Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. By which I mean you only get enough of those as suits big business needs so that the oligarchy can make as much as possible off the slave class as possible. We export this system as far as possible around the globe, sanctioning as many as we can, bombing those that we need to, and bringing countries to heel.
The British did the same with the Empire upon Which the Sun Never Set. Being a people foreign to the Island originally, who subjugated it, ruled it, and brought civilization to it; they determined that they’d do the same to the whole world if possible. When needed, they were willing to starve and oppress the conquered if it would feed the Usury Beast. And they did, until it bankrupted them under Churchill the Drunk, who sold away the Empire to the Capitalist American’s younger, more nimble Usury Beast.
The same happened with the French. The Germans. The Prussians. Same story, different song and dance, according to the cultures and circumstances.
But, in the end, we need to let go of it all.
We need to let go of all the debts, and seek a massive debt jubilee. Honestly, it’s the only way forward at this point in time. To ask each other to forgive us our debts, as Christ did. For, while He is Just and demands an accounting for sin, he doesn’t ask for any kind of interest upon it. Simply to repay that which was done, which He did, on Good Friday, by uniting ourselves to His Life, Death, and Resurrection.
Yes, there is justice in asking repayment of loans.
But, as the quote above shows, those that are in usurious loans are also entitled to be paid back what they’ve paid in usury. How much of the anger, and squabbling that occurs in our public forums today is simply due to generational disputes between those that don’t have the words, but feel and understand the injustice done to them from these ridiculous usurious loans?
Do we have the ability to really pursue justice in returning the money they paid in usury back to them? I would argue that we can’t, at this point, unfortunately. The system is too big, too complicated, to track all that down. But, what is absolutely within our power, is to stop making usurious loans. To force banks and the rich to eat the loss, and restructure loans going forward.
At minimum, those few reading can avoid giving out usurious loans and pass the wisdom gained here to friends and family. Avoid getting caught up by taking the loans, starve the beast, and do what you can to keep your families and communities as free from the conflicts, injustices, and unrealities it brings upon them.
Instead, lend in charity. Give from the fullness of your heart, from God’s bounty, given to you, that you are the steward of. Use it as a tool to water the families and businesses in need around you, that they may grow, flourish, and bring forth good fruit with your labor and their own.
And that, dear readers, is as good a place to start as any.
On the contrary, it is written (Exod 22:25) If thou lend money to any of thy people that is pour, that dwelleth with thee, though shalt not be hard upon them as an extortioner, nor oppress them with usuries
- St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Secunda, Secunda Q78 A1
Agreed, good sir, agreed.
Posted without comment, the author's own comment elsewhere about home loans.
"Yes, do what you can. I totally get having to take out home loans, but I’d do what you can to pay them off early, and never get another one. Buy the next with cash from 1st."
https://tinyurl.com/3932tpcy