Usury and The One True Bureaucracy

@17:46 in the video linked below: M.Knowles has mis-stated what usury is -- apparently the mis-statement is intentional.

@18:17 in the video linked below: T.Aquinas (in the quote) is outright wrong about what what lending money at interest is.

@18:55 in the video linked below: M.Knowles: "So that's [Aquinas' argument] a little bit confusing ..."

Aquinas' argument against lending money at interest is "a little bit confusing" because Aquinas is tying himself into a logical pretzel to attempt to defend and justify a specific immoral and self-serving practice of The One True Bureaucracy of his day.

To lend money at interest is not "to sell what does not exist", it is to sell the use of that money for a specific time and at a specific cost. The use of money certainly does exist, and it exists apart from the money itself. The use of a sum of money is a wholly different thing from the use of a measure of wine or wheat -- the using of a measure of wine or wheat *just is* the consumption of it; but the use of a sum of money does not consume nor destroy the money.

There is a world of difference between the judicious lending of money at interest for some specific and defined purpose with a reasonable expectation of success and the modern orgy of debt-fueled consumerism.

Also, the real reason that The One True Bureaucracy created canon law outlawing "usury" was so that wealthy organs of that same One True Bureaucracy could further enrich themselves by usurious lending practices which would make a mafia don blush, all the while pretending that it wasn't usury.

This is how the "It's Not Really Usury" scam worked -- Petty Aristocrat A believes it will benefit his soul to go on Crusade. He doesn't have enough money to outfit himself and his retainers as needs be. He goes to The One True Bureaucracy (Division: Wealthy Organ B) to borrow the necessary monies. Wealthy Organ B lends him the money -- on condition of a mortgage (i.e. "death-grip") on his estate; that is, all income from the estate is to be turned over to Wealthy Organ B until the debt is repaid by income derived by other means, and if the debt is not repaid in some time period, the estate is forfeit to Wealthy Organ B.

I leave to Gentle Reader's imagination the contemplation of the fate of the widow and children of Petty Aristocrat A should he die of any cause while on Crusade.

Now, while actual usury is indeed bad and is indeed sinful and should indeed be prohibited by law, The One True Bureaucracy are not the people to be defining "usury" for anyone.

In the OT Law, God does not forbid the lending of money, and (contrary to the doctrines of The One True Bureaucracy) he does not forbid the lending of money at interest. What God does forbid is the enslavement of one's fellow Israelites (which, in Christianity, is universalized to all human beings) by means of debt. In almost every instance in the OT which is translated as a prohibition on 'usury', that prohibition is linked with the rationale for the prohibition -- that you not enslave you fellow Israelite by means of the debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fgd8jBo1Sg