Today, most 18 year olds could walk into just about any bank and be entrusted with thousands of dollars of credit. We as Americans take debt and its accompanying, exorbitant interest for granted. But this wasn’t always the case. Old Testament Israel, the ancient philosophers, the early church, medieval societies, and the reformers all enforced strict prohibitions on any usury, or at the very least, capped interest rates and prohibited their use to exploit the poor. What changed and why?
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Student debt should be forgiven. The debtors may have been foolish, but the lenders have the greater sin from their usury.
The irony of this episode being sponsored by David "God instituted capitalism" Reece 🤣
The loan forgiveness isn't just for the gender studies people. Less than half of college educated people work in a field that requires their degree.
You're right to point out the forgiveness basically takes from people without degrees and gives to the people with a degree. Considering people with a degree make nearly double on average than those without, it's literally taking from the lower class and giving to the upper.
Yes. Saved you time.
Glory to God
The taxpayer shouldn't foot the bill. The lender needs to eat the loss.
Universities are exceptionally pernicious. Look up the endowment of almost any college and then remind yourself they have more legal and tax protections for their assets and money than churches do in this country. It's absolutely criminal the way the university system works in America.
At 47:30 Joel mentions dual wielding. Joel Webbon didn't just have a Libertarian Phase, he had a D&D Phase, CONFIRMED! 🙂
11:52 im not an agent, i just invest in real estate. The only point of an agent is to help market your property and field calls for you. all the paperwork can be overlooked by a lawyer for a small fee if its a more complicated transaction. contracts dont need to be super long or complicated for the everyday house sale. they can be like 1 page or 2. the potential value could be done by an appraiser. and honestly if they just opened the MLS to the public, the need for an agent to market would disappear.
Talking to agents all the time, i feel they sometimes hinder the process more than help. they are supposed to represent their client but very often they dont. there was just a huge lawsuit that was settled against them for millions of dollars because they were taking advantage of homeowners.
Joel was right. the government is the reason we have agents and you lose 3% of your homes value.
-If you want to buy a house, DONT USE AN AGENT. just call the listing agent as their phone number is usually in the description of zillow. save yourself 3%. always try to negotiate as the listing prices arent necessarily what the house is worth. its all subjective and changes every few months and each season.
I would encourage you to have an open mind about bitcoin. Many of the issues you talked about have to do with our credit based money system that requires more and more debt to function. Bitcoin offers a solution you might be interested in learning about.
Zuckerberg is a liar. Some of my friend’s post are still being reported and banned in Facebook.
I think the simplest solution to the student debt crisis is just to let the students file for bankruptcy like how it's possible to file for bankruptcy with any other kind of debt. Then the people issuing loans would think very carefully about offering those kinds of loans to students in the future.
I have thought a lot about usury. I thought of it with respect to Jesus' command to love one's neighbor as one's self. From this point of view, the charging of interest only makes sense when both parties would benefit. This would usually be for business loans, where the rate of growth of the business would be greater than the interest rate. So, if I were dictator, I would make these rules:
1. Interest cannot be charged such that one party wins and the other party loses. There must be a clause in the loan contract explaining how the loan makes the borrower financially better off. If the borrower loses the means which were originally intended to pay back the loan (such as if the business associated with a business loan becomes unprofitable), then interest payments are canceled.
2. Interest must be capped either with respect to time, or with respect to quantity of interest paid. Unending interest payments on a finite loan are not allowed.
I am not in favor of a specific cap on interest rates, because which interest rates are reasonable would depend on circumstances.
I think it's reasonable that the ancient fathers totally rejected the charging of interest, because labor back then was not capital intensive. In the modern day, you can use a loan to buy a truck or a machine for your business, and thus increase productivity. But labor in the past did not use expensive machinery like this. So, in a sense, money can be fruitful if it's spent on expanding a business. Or, if the choice is rent or a mortgage payment, then it might sometimes be possible that mortgage payments would be cheaper than renting + saving up to buy a house.
Implementing a sane policy on usury would depend on having honest money, which we do not have.
To add to Michael's comments around 26:00:00, the modern Church even uses poisonous monetary/currency conceptual terms and visuals like "credit" in evangelicalism too (i.e., "Christ has credited our account" or "Christ was the credit to our bankrupt account"). Perhaps not the best example or euphemism to describe our spiritual unity/honor in Christ, but unfortunately used much too often. Conflation within metaphysical definitions and language matter.
Nuclear codes will get cracked before bitcoin.
Look forward to listening. Usury is a difficult concept to pin down in a fiat currency system where cash loses its value every day. Example: If I want to loan $30K to my neighbor to buy a car over a 4 year period at no interest and an inflation rate of 5%/yr I will lose 18% of the original value of my money at the end of the 4 years, so while I have the $30K in cash that market value of money is about $24,700 in today's buying power. Now scale this 10x for a house over a 30 year period and your money would be worth less than 25% of its original cash value.
Since inflation is difficult to compute (even on a 7 year loan) "interest" that matches the inflation rate is not true interest in terms of value returned to the lender.
Some guys seem to think that any interest is usury, but in a fiat system you can easily make the case that you're just trying to recoup your money.
Solution for lenders: only lend out short term loans where inflation is more predictable.
Good episode! Now do insurance
What do U brothers think about a church that doesn’t want to buy/own a church building and is ok to stay renting a space???
What about the courses at a university like Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary science, Law, Engineering etc. You have zero idea what it cost to put a Medical Faculty at a University. Just to have the thing there is multiple millions of dollars.
I really appreciate you brothers addressing this topic. What about investments that grow through compound interest: such as bonds, mutual funds, and money market accounts? These are some of the ways people invest and build wealth in our economy. These types of investments means participating in a financial system that is lending money at interest and leveraging that in order to build our wealth. How do we square that with the commandments about usury?
Joel can you advise on what stocks in which you think we should be investing based on the quantum computer comments?
Don't think I've ever heard a pastor talk about usery but it's one of the biggest sins in our country. Well done guys 👍
I found the perfect theme song for your upcoming conference: the newly dropped ‘Christ Is King’ by Impending Doom
Software is not a real service?
So if I loan you my $5000 tractor for a month to use …I charge you rent for it's use. IF I loan you just $5000 for a month why should I not get rent for it's use. If not then I could just turn the money into property and rent it out. But by keeping it liquid…fungible it is more flexible in it's use. And money is NOT just for exchange. Good money has 3 purposes. 1. A medium of exchange 2. Standard of value 3 Store of value. Our present day money is not a good 'store of value " due to inflation e.g.. Economics…like science has advanced much since the ancients.
NOt contributing to society ? Somebody needs to watch "IT's a Wonderful Life'…again. To loan out money to help a family build a house to live in instead of having to wait till they are 50 yrs old to save up enough is a great contribution to society . And that 's just one example.
Does 'Private family banking' not use interest and usury?
Maximize profits minimize cost someone cleared a temple twice in the span of 3 years i wonder why hmm
Please research what Sue Becker has taught. I think gluten-phobia is the current psy-op. Paleo is a diet based on evolution. Jesus said "I am the bread of life." Wheat is not poison. How food is processed in our country is poisonous.
"It doesn't mean forgiving [the student loans]" I understand you are saying that in the context of a poor political policy. However, in the context of the greater topic, usury (biblically ANY increase), God commanded all debt to be released every seven years. Deut 15:1-2 "15 At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. 2 And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the Lord’s release." There is no "skin in the game" of borrowers today because the entire system is predatory and ungodly. Leviticus 25:10 "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." Remember, the bible calls usury theft, and God's law on theft was pretty clear, restore double. Cancel all debt. Clean out the lending institutions funds and return them to the people.
The onus on cereal is on the parent!! If no one buys, the corporation will change its product. In fact it usually only changes its product to begin with because consumer tests and response surveys told them how to make more money. So you charge the corporation with it is all about money, money, money. Yet for the parent it is all about convenience, money and their spoiled brat saying I want it. Parents, take responsibility!
To be fair Zuckerberg made changes well before Trump won. Zuckerberg was definitely impacted by Trump's reaction to the assassination attempt.
Yes, government regulation is necessary because we are sinful. NO! big government cannot be better. Greed and deceit are crimes. We do not need more regulation by unelected agencies operating outside their constitutional power! We need better and SMALLER/FEWER laws. We need a justice system where: 1 We are not trying to prove the guilty innocent no matter what. 2. we ARE trying to get to truth and justice. 3. Judges do not automatically disrespect anyone and any case where there is not a lawyer. There is no EASY solution. Consider lead in gasoline. At the time it was being considered, there was plenty of evidence it was dangerous. People working in the plants with the lead were dying. The Surgeon General approved it. We know that hundreds of millions of people suffered and are still suffering from it. The guilty surgeon general is dead. Who pays, how much, and to whom, and what constitutes proof?
Nehemiah required the predatory lenders to return, not the principle, but the interest of the predatory loans in his day.