Re: usury?
- From: "J.H.Boersema" <joshb@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:20:36 +0000 (UTC)
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Yisroel Markov <ey.markov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Steve Goldfarb" <slg@xxxxxxxxx> said:
Yisroel Markov <ey.markov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:[...]
So the way I read the halacha, if you give someone money, they can only
give you the same amount in return. And if you wish to get more money
back, (that is, it's a business venture) then you cannot require that they
repay the principle - it has to be put at risk.
This is logical.
haha. What you mean is that a tiny fraction of this entire problem
is that if you do put the capital at greater risk, then you'd have
more right to get a variable payment back that might eventually
exceed the principle.
Unfortunately that tiny bit of shrapnel of the whole issue means
nothing in the greater scheme of finance and its effects. A boat
with gaps still has parts of the hull that are OK, which by no
means result in a floating boat.
The problem is that however way you wish to cut this, whenever you
allow a profit *motive* on the investments you are inviting the
effect that the most likely to be externally profitable operations
get most/all the funding. And there goes your nation, down the drain.
Doesn't matter if you call it heter iska, doesn't matter if you call
it IRS, doesn't matter if you call it Torah, doesn't matter if you
find 100 sages that will testify it is Halacha (lawful, haha).
Even on non-profit loans, it is still a big risk that the money
goes to the most profitable organizations ! But the risk is reduced,
and the pleasure has to come from joyfully fulfilling your obligations
to the Torah; knowing that you did your bit, knowing that it was your
thumb, your very own thumb, that sat in that possible hole in the hull
and that mad eall of the nation of Israel float and live a good life.
My guess is, some part of the soul knows this perfectly well, and if
not then G.d knows; and hence there is pleasure about these activities,
honor, and not in the least of all: a future for Israel.
I suppose it is the task of the community, to assure that the
investments are made to useful causes and certainly not to abusive
causes. Funding a new shoe repair shop, that is totally great. That
is needed, that is employ and needed services. The shoe repair (wo)man
needs capital to get started, it is worth to set up that shop well
from the start. Funding a cotton plantation where slave labor is abused:
not good, can be very profitable indeed, but is not good.
Heter iska: wrong.
Anything that results in a *profit* motive on a loan, and to a degree
you run the risk all loans get infected by a profit motive, is bad.
But it isn't easy to deny a profit motive in enforceable law, how do
you enforce that ? How do you know a lean to a shoe repair shop wasn't
made without the profit motive, even though it was made on interest ?
That interest may have very well been meant to generate a larger
capital in order to donate that to some good cause (say to write a
sefer Torah.) How do you know ? Well, you don't I guess (heaven knows),
but in order to have an enforceable law that at least reduces the
problem: prohibit any kind of actual profit. Notice how this is also
factually useful: while denying the profit, you will deny anyone at
all to make a living from lending money (long term). Because it always
generates a loss, since some (and in the Torah system many) loans do
not get payed back at all.
The idea is obvious enough: the jew is not to cling to excess material
wealth, which is exactly what the ability to lend to others amounts to.
If you can lend, you have excess capital that you do not immediately
need. If you have much more then others, you become the prime source
of the next (non-profit) loans. This will possibly raise the community
its love for you, as your capital does good things for everyone
(ideally), and it should reduce your capital - rather quickly
considdering the 7th year loan repayment cancel. What that all amounts
to is ....
.... the rich do not build up (as much). There are no rich people, or at
least their wealth is constantly down graded through loans, and all benefit.
Note how wealth in general is not the work of one person at all, but
often a group effort. Someone owns 10.000 lifestock ? He no doubt has a
lot of people helping out with that. So it isn't all really earned
wealth to begin with.
Anyway: the rich and poor will get more together through these laws,
no class divisions, or at least it is a big positive effect on the
problem that rich abuses poor, to get richer and dehumanize the poor.
Lookie there, a few minutes of thinking and the greatnes of the Torah
money law is just a pooring fountain of joy and community stability.
.... if only Israel wanted to do it ...
(Nitpick - the principal in a loan is also at risk,
no borrower is 100% safe.) However, the business itself may be
time-limited. E.g., venture capital partnerships always are. A
share-cropping arrangement is of a one-year duration. What if, in our
example, the widget-making is under a three-year contract with the
Pentagon (after which it's going to discontinue the system that uses
this widget), so our partnership is scheduled to terminate in three
years? Does that make my participation a term loan, effectively?
It is prohibited. the only question is: how to punish the people
making these loans, so that the economy will function properly.
You are thinking in the wrong framework, you are thinking "we need
a class of capital providers, and they need their capital back in
order to re-invest it to the needy economy." That is a false frame
of mind; get out of it, it is not the Torah, it is not the truth.
Value is build up from work, effort. Sometimes this generates
sums of money, or you could build up funds from collecting many
small gifts. That money is to be put to good use without a profit
motive, until it has evaporated.
Think with me a little more: what is a great economy ? Think, oh
please Israel, think. Everything is so beautiful, but you miss
it all.
When you have a "startup economy," as in a startup nation, like
a big earthquacke shook everything down and now everything has
to be rebuild. Then it make sense to make loans, to get that shoe
repair shop up in 2 month's, say. But then the economy becomes
established and now we are 100 years later. Guess what: hundreds,
thousands of thriving very competent businesses exist. The best
of them survive (looking purely at the market mechanism in a
Torah economy.) And then, who needs capital ? Only a tiny bit
around the margins, where new things get developed and the odd
business goes bust and needs to be replaced. The demand for
capital in this mature economy is ... low ! Should be low. Why
do well functioning, working business need capital ? To grow ?
Grow grow grow ??
Ok, now compare the non-Torah money-hiring economy we have today.
Oy oy oy, do you not see the investors with piles of cash looking
for opportunity to invest ? Let's say we abandon Torah law in our
mature economy, and suddenly allow money selling for profit. The
capital builds up quickly obviously, the most competent investors
get rich, richer, and so on. They *want* to invest their money.
But everything is very slow for them, because the economy has so
many stable businesses and all is pretty well pretty much. Their
capital simply isn't in demand. Right ? Low demand for capital.
Many investors probably think: ok then, fine, I'll live out my
capital by consuming it, and join the ranks of labor again.
Sure, many will, the best of them.
Others will do things differently: they are going to attack this
mature economy, in order to destabilize it. Say the bread baking
industry is just fine, people are happy and the bread is good.
In the Torah economy: everyone is happy, as there is no investor
class. The Torah does not allow that class to exist.
But we changed the law (disastrously) in this example, and the
investor class grows up, and the best (worst) of them become
rich, and they know their business like others know theirs.
So, they got a large pile of cash, and out of nowhere they are
going to offer this to someone in exchange for building up a
bread factory. So that thing gets build with their capital. They
of course make sure that labor is as wage-abused as they can
possibly get away with; the number of strikes and anger in society
eventually establishes that dynamic equilibrium all the time.
Not only do they try to wage abuse people as much as they can,
but they can also temporarily make the prices redicilously
low, below the point of profit. So the operation is running a
loss. But now the great trick: all the other bread operations
can not compete, and the unknowing or uncaring public goes increasingly
for cheapest price. So the bread plant is running a loss, but the
turn over is increasing and the other operations have to lower their
prices as well. It becomes a contest of who can hold out this price
war the longest. Who are the capital specialists ? The investors
target a market they know they can beat in a price war. And so all
the other bread operations to bankrupt and close down. Misery all
around, created from nowhere. There was no demand for this misery.
There was no reason for it. But it emerged because of the bad law
change.
Then there are several games that can be played: they can close
the bread-industry-price-attack-factory, and start funding new
bread operations, who follow their model and deliver them a return
on investment; money. Or they can expand their existing operation
to dominate the bread market, having displaced the existing order
with an abused labor company.
This chaos ripples through the economy: quit a few bread makers
had an employment loss, so their demand on the economy also suddenly
crashed. This means that the companies that had served them also
get to be strugling, and that is precisely what the investors need !
Then these companies only need a little more reduction of turn over,
or a bit of a competition, and they'd also roll over into their hands.
You'd notice that in a mature economy, things can get quite reactive
to change: every small profitable niche is being occupied by some
specialists. One bit of a shock, and quite a number of (luxury) sector
operations can get to struggle with their income/cost balanse. The
market system itself can become sensitive to shocks, even without an
attacking investor class.
And then what the investor class wants: to gain more and more control,
to own more and more land, to own more and more companies, to make
these companies bigger and bigger; to own everything and to suck on
everything.
See ? The investor class creates the demand for their capital by
attacking the mature economy (or at least that is a big strategy
they could be using - and those that don't, well ...).
All that trouble, which eventually turns into outright war and state
dictatorships and all the way to feudal opression, all of that because
of following laws like heter iska & prozbul, without knowing what you're
playing with ...
Follow the Torah, be on the safe side, as obviously Israel hasn't yet
comprehended these things... Respect Torah money and soil distributive
laws. For your own material wellbeing. It isn't so difficult, Israel
surely can understand these things.
Don't play deaf ears. I know you can read, I know you aren't stupid.
You aren't too dumb for this; many people might be, but from Israel I
don't accept that. Live up to your honor and do the Torah economy.
Those that don't ? The "sages" that say you can lend money on interest ?
The question is not whether they are right, but the question is whether
or not they are even jews. How they need to be punished. That is the
Torah. Torah is clear, absolutely crystal clear on this subject, not to
mention absolutely correct as well. Love your Torah as it is all you
got. If you don't fight free money hiring you don't love your Torah.
Protect your wayward brothers and sisters from the mistake of money
hiring under whatever pretence. Don't think that this account won't
be settled one day, understanding the mechanics of money hiring for
profit will already speak volumes about how that account is going to
get settled. Chances are h i g h it will get settled in blood. No
idle threat for the sake of it, think it through, it is serious
business, the "game of the whole world." Think it through, pull your
Rabbi by the beard and force him to admit: the Torah is true.
Sweet jews, get your stuff together, for your own sake. These are no
jokes.
Oh by the way, just noticed something else:
The Sages that are *against* money for profit selling, they do so in
the most extreme of words.
The "sages" that allow money for profit selling, do so in weak and
doubting words, and still say that no-profit is better.
The issue is: the money allowing "sages" don't really understand, they
do "touchy feely" but ignorant free-thinking economics. They are not
following the Torah, and they know they don't. They might mean well,
but they make up stuff and they aren't sure about it. At least they
have the honesty not to be firm. They don't say: "it is great to
lend on interest," in general that is not the position AFAIK.
So there you might want to take that into account when adding the
positions of all presumed sages on this issue. The anti-torah "sages"
might be a majority (have heard that say), but it is a majority which
is weak in its position. The pro-Torah Sages are strong in their
warnings, even very extreme in their words.
The anti-Torah "sage" says some vague things like "we now have a
currency dominated economy, and therefore it was needed to resolve
a credit issue to make up the heter iska ...". Ignoring the fact
that Israel is *ordered* to lend readily, non-profit. If the cash
was there for the profit loans, it was there for the non-profit loans.
The pro-Torah Sage says something like: "everyone who sells money
on profit will not resurect into Olam Haba." Can it even get more
extreme ? I wouldn't dare say that, but I do say: you will probably
be paying this account in endless suffering and blood. You will
probably die for it by the sword, as you have been, as you have been.
Oy Israel, you Torah awaits you with open arms, to protect you all
day every day, every night, come back.
--
http://www.socialism.nl
.
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