[PEN-L:4680] Re: Trond's Debt/Asset polarization model

[Ellen Dannin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

On Tue, 11 Apr 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>      With respect to the views of traditional 
> religions toward interest, let me note that: 
> 1)  Judaism only forbade it within the community;
> it was OK to collect from gentiles.
* * *
> 5)  All of the above accepted profit based on risk-
> sharing, the view of interest being that it involved
> no risk, "sterile" money creating more money.

I'm not sure any of the above is fully correct.  Deuteronomy 
XXIII does distinguish between "brother" and "foreignor" but a foreignor 
(nacri) is not the same as a non-Jew or stranger (ger).  There are many 
parts of the bible that make it very clear you cannot oppress the ger or 
stranger.  The nacri, as I understand it, was the transient, not a 
foreignor living in the community.  Apparently the Talmudists made these 
disctinctions even clearer.

Second, interest or usury apparently also meant profit.  Trades had to be 
reasonably even.  The Talmudists spent a great deal of effort going into 
the impact of futures trading on harvests, profits of storeowners, and 
the like.

I actually think that Trond's suggestion of looking at this different way 
to organize society is interesting in the way that anthropology or 
science fiction are. They give us a way of stepping back and looking at 
the possibility of different means of organization.  When faced with so 
many who say that money is and must be the measure of all things I find 
that these comparisons give me the ability to ask, "Really?"  In a sense, 
they are the study that is so difficult to run in social sciences.

ellen dannin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]