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What Capital Never Told You About Rent

58 points · 46 comments · longitudinal93

  1. fwlr · · focus · HN ↗
    Charging rent on capital was historically called “usury”, and was denounced by everyone from Aristotle to Aquinas, from Moses to Buddha to Muhammad. I suspect they had the right of it, which poses some problems for our present society, fractally composed of usury (as the article aptly outlines).
    1. Plasmoid · · focus · HN ↗
      That theory was based on the idea there was a fixed amount of wealth in the world and it was impossible to create more.
      1. fwlr · · focus · HN ↗
        I am not familiar with every theory behind every condemnation of usury (there are a multitude) but this is not true for any of the theories that I do know.

        In fact it rather sounds like an intentionally foolish theory invented by someone practicing usury as the only possible reason anyone could disagree with them, and then incorrectly attributed to any opposition to their practice. You can sort of tell this is the case, because if you reverse the theory you get “usury creates wealth while other activities just shuffle it around”, which is a very flattering thing for an usurer to believe.

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