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Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 4th, 2009, 2:35 pm
by nomad
I think part of it is that being part of a group gives you a certain amount of anonymity. Similar to the way people will do things in a riot that they would never do by themselves, either because they feel they can get away with it or because they are caught up in the flow of the general groupthink. When you are part of a corporation and don't necessarily see directly the actions, or when you think of it as the corporation acting, even though you are making the decisions, it's easier to ignore the morality and rationalize your part in it. And then I'm sure some people just do what they are taught as "the way we do business" without realizing the potential consequences.

Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 6th, 2009, 5:20 am
by Coyote Goodfellow

Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 8th, 2009, 1:46 pm
by Karen

Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 10th, 2009, 10:35 am
by Bluegoat

Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 11th, 2009, 3:09 am
by Coyote Goodfellow

Re: Usury and the financial crisis

PostPosted: May 11th, 2009, 8:36 pm
by postodave
Bearing in mind that I'm not an economist it seems to me that what Calvin was doing was to ask how you apply the spirit of the law in a changed situation because applying the letter only would be mere casuistry. If you go back to the medieval situation you had a predominantly rural economy much as you did in the OT but you also had an approach to land ownership which was very different to the OT jubilee laws. The monasteries which were the medieval equivalent of multinationals were theoretically committed to poverty but owned vast tracts of land (did I really quote mpathg there) and therefore wealth. The guilds protected the middle class craftsman and helped enforce the idea of a just price for the skilled. Money lending at interest was possible if you made use of a Jewish banker. Technological advances forced the pace of change; from the iron plough to the enclosures the countryside was changing. New technology destroyed the power of the guilds but put nothing in its place to protect the workers in the new industrial context until the triumph of trade unionism centuries later. Could industrialism have developed without capitalism? It seems unlikely. Could the old agricultural system with its built in inefficiencies have fed the growing population? The changes took centuries and keeping a part of old testament law in place in the midst of changes that took centuries would have made little sense; surely it would be the triumph not of scripture as spiritual truth but as ideology. To insist on keeping that one law in place, unless as a part of consistent and flexible economic thinking would be little short of superstition.

Just a thought - open to correction by wiser heads.