Tuesday, February 7, 2012

nature of money

A market requires/enables us to compare two fundamentally different objects, with few if any common quantities or qualities. How much steak is there in a shirt?

How do you do this? By using a third thing, which in itself has no qualities at all nor any purpose other than to mediate exchange.

The implication is that lending money at interest is a perversion, since one is using money as an end in itself. "Money is not created to earn money." The argument is raised again by Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent.

We, today, might disagree with that sentiment. But compare it to what came before. Money at interest leads quickly to debt, which leads to the people being enslaved as debt peons, or worse.

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