Jeff Swann's avatar
Jeff Swann 2 years ago
No, interest is rent. If you can loan someone a car & charge rent for access to the car, you can loan them the money to buy a car & charge rent for access to the money.

Replies (4)

techfeudalist 's avatar
techfeudalist 2 years ago
I don’t see how debt continues to be widely used under a hard money (bitcoin) standard. The fiat world is based on debt. I expect a bitcoin standard to be based on savings and equity (profit sharing).
Interest is not rent, especially if you’re talking about a financial system in which there are a finite number of currency units. Interest doesn’t exist as money in the bitcoin system. Interest doesn’t exist in the fiat system as money either, it simply creates requirements and incentives for theft. Once introduced, it acts like a parasitic virus ultimately destroying the host.
Jeff Swann's avatar
Jeff Swann 2 years ago
True, loans will be risky for the loan maker & costly for the person in debt. So the supply & demand should both be much lower than today where the cost of making a loan is zero & the cost of servicing debts is eroded over time by inflation.
Jeff Swann's avatar
Jeff Swann 2 years ago
Idk what you mean by "interest doesn't exist as money." If someone can grant you access to a car or a house or a tractor & charge you for the time that you have access to any of those things, why can't someone grant you access to money to buy any of the above & charge you for the time you have access to their money? Who is going to stop this from happening? I do think there will be much less money lending & more lending of physical capital, like cars & tractors, because the value of saving & reducing upfront costs is higher under a Bitcoin standard. And the risk of loaning a bearer asset form of money is probably higher than loaning a vehicle which can be tracked & disabled & more easily retrieved by force. But lending is not inherently evil or destructive. It is just risky & prone to corruption.