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I suggest the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Almost all early religious entities, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, condemned the concept of using money to make
by djsumdog 9y ago
I suggest the book Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Almost all early religious entities, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, condemned the concept of using money to make money as immoral. The belief was that money was meant to exchange debt, not make people wealthy off that debt.
Today Islam still holds this as a majority view in many places (not universally). I'm simplifying it a lot, so I really recommend the book. There is a strong correlation between debt and guilt. In Christian doctrine, they're very interchangeable (forgive us our debts/sins as we forgive those who are indebted to/have sinned against us).
Guilt, Sin and debt are the same word in many ancient languages, including old English. Guilt and debt are still the same word in German.
- saagarjha 9y agoI thought that Judaism had some sort of exception that allowed usury in the case of lending to non-Jewish people. This was why many banks back then were run by them.
- soneil 9y agoMy understanding is that a lot of banking was jewish simply because of their legal system. You could reasonably expect a jewish bank to obey a jewish court decision, even if that court was on another continent. This lent an otherwise unheard of level of credibility, and allowed jewish banks to network like no other.