Twenty years is a long time to be doing this. It’s a long time to be doing anything.
From March 12, 2005, “On usury (part 3)“:
One worrisome aspect of the modern understanding of usury, for example, is that the standard for what constitutes “excessive” interest is rather vague. I argued previously that the real standard for usury, the real principle at stake, is whether our lending/investment is a matter of empowerment or exploitation. In making such an argument, I’m essentially attempting to distill the principle at work at the heart of the earlier law, written for a different world, and to apply that principle to the world in which we find ourselves today.
It’s interesting that such an attempt encounters little disagreement when the subject is economics and when ancient proscriptions are reinterpreted in a way that permits our 401(k)s and home mortgages. Yet taking the same approach to sexual ethics provokes howls of protest.
This series of posts on the meaning of usury has been a kind of extended holiday into the abstract. I needed such a vacation, as the actual and particular this week — the vile bankruptcy bill sailing through the Senate — was too depressing.
But, alas, let’s get back to those depressing particulars. The bankruptcy bill is an endorsement of exploitative lending. The immoral is made moral with the full pedagogical and punitive force of law. Usury is endorsed, and will be enforced. The right of usurers to practice their vice is made sacrosanct and the courts and police will be enlisted as agents of their usury.
It is a wholly and enthusiastically corrupt piece of legislation. The task now, for those who care about such things, is to make sure that those senators who supported this insupportable bill face real consequences for doing so. If their reputations, moral standing and electoral prospects are not diminished as a result of this vote then God only knows what they’ll be emboldened to do next.
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