Reply #72: That is the crux of the biscuit (thanks, Frank), the credit based economy and

[Greyhound]

the usury system. Your question stems from the false premise that interest rates are charged to reflect some perceived risk of repayment. My initial reply was that the basic system is the problem and that usurious interest is but a symptom of it.

Contrary to popular myth, higher interest is not determined by risk, but by assets and the likelihood of further/future business. The uber-wealthy are, as a group, notorious for failing to pay their bills, just ask any restaurateur, or hotel owner, that has had her/his pace trashed by a party thrown by one of them that got out of hand. Likewise the working classes will generally work themselves to death, often depriving their own families, to pay off debt.

This system has been intentionally evolved to what we have now, a perverse system where the common people are literally their credit rating. A system, BTW, that is rife with errors and has, or because there is, utterly no accountability. A person's ability to work, to find a home, to exist in this society, is determined by this arbitrary rating.

This thread is about the system of profiting from poverty, a practice with its roots in antiquity and railed against for just as long, in spite of the fact that it has been specifically forbade by at least 2 of the 3 religions of the desert God (I don't know about Islam, but since Mohammad was a merchant, I suspect it is not), it has continued with only the briefest of respites, for thousands of years, and has become ubiquitous in the last 30 or 40.

Your question doesn't even contemplate the possibility of an economy without the issuance of credit for consumable purchases. The whole system of permanent inflation is a direct result of this scheme which only benefits the financial industry at the expense of the rest of society.