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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

Thomas Aquinas described usury as the unlawful attempt to charge someone for the use of time itself.

Aristotle called it the "unnatural birth of money from money".

Religions who ban usury (now or in the past) only did so for "one's own kind", sometimes leaving theological ambiguity as to whether you are allowed to charge those of a different faith. We might call it hypocrisy.

To Artistotle, we would say today that his notion of the "barrenness" of money is illogical - other assets that don't bear "offspring", such as houses and land, could generate rent, so too could money.

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> Aristotle called it the "unnatural birth of money from money"

In a Malthusian economy, i.e. zero real growth, a condition which characterizes most of antiquity, this makes sense. Rulers borrowing to take a calculated risk usually meant conquest, i.e. violently taking others' stuff.

The economic and moral calculus changes in a positive-sum game, where risk can increase the size of the pie for all. So some of this variance may be explained by whether the thinker lived in a stable or growing era.

> other assets that don't bear "offspring", such as houses and land, could generate rent

Financial yield traces its roots directly to crop yield. (The grain markets in Ancient Rome are a great example of markets working without stable conceptions of money and banking [1].)

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/grain-market-in-the-rom...

> Religions who ban usury (now or in the past) only did so for "one's own kind"

Not the case for islam, it's banned for all, regardless of being an 'in-group' or 'out-group'.

And the closest financial instrument similar to charging interest that's allowed is basically the lender buying it and selling shares of the thing to you at a markup with installments, meaning that they are sharing the risk with you.

> selling shares of the thing to you at a markup with installments

Islamic banking has provided several workarounds to accommodate financial transactions without charging explicit interest.

>To Artistotle, we would say today that his notion of the "barrenness" of money is illogical

From my perspective Aristotle is spot on. In fact, you just keep listing more examples how he is correct. All those things you listed can only generate an income by having another person pay for it. The house is dead, the people living inside it generate the income that pays your rental payments.

But a house is not consumed during its ordinary use. The point of the Aristotelians is that money is more like a bottle of wine: You can't simultaneously charge for its use and expect to get it back, because whenever you use it, it's used up (hence, "usury").

A house is absolutely consumed in ordinary use. It is just a slow process. Paint fades over time, the roof needs repairs. It is generally seen as worthwhile to keep a house in good repair (except in Japan where they sometimes rebuild new every 20 years - I'm not sure how this works but it might be insightful to look at this exception). I've seen houses that have been abandoned (generally a farm that sold out to a larger farm and so the house isn't needed) - in just a few years the house is clearly falling apart just because of a few little maintenance issues not being taken care of.

A car need to be consumed in ordinary use. There are people still driving the car they bought new in 1968 (or whatever year), and the car looks and drives like it is less than a year old. However the amount of labor required to keep a car at this level isn't generally seen as worth it and so the average car is about 12 years old and obviously not like new at that age.

In modern society money isn't "used up". Quite the opposite. The act of lending money actually creates more money since every $1 minted lives on the balance sheets of banks many times over.

Modern money is debt. Every dollar is borrowed, pretty much. Money is created by borrowing, and destroyed by paying back the loan.

> Thomas Aquinas described usury as the unlawful attempt to charge someone for the use of time itself.

Aquinas also does not seem to mention being rewarded for risk in a commercial/investment venture (AFAICT):

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3078.htm

Ezra Pound says “a charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production.”

Of course, Ezra Pound was a proper and proud fascist.

I don't think he was quite as proud after the second world war, when he avoided prosecution for treason by claiming insanity.

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