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Usury is an Inter-Cultural Weapon of Mass Destruction

349 words by attila written on 2012-10-15, last edit: 2012-10-15, tags: capitalism, finance, usury ⋔ Previous post: Server-side JS ⋔ Next post: Lessons from the al-Qaeda chronicles: Romney and the attack on women - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

I've wanted to write something about this topic for a long time but never feel like I have it together or have any time to think properly. It also has ocurred to me that there are probably other, more knowledgeable people than me who have thought about this. There is nothing new under the sun.

I do not have any ducks in a row nor do I have any time to devote to this but I feel like I should note this somewhere now while I'm thinking about it. The "inter-cultural" aspect of this idea is what interests me the most. It is my theory that Europeans were not able to over-run the planet until they went all-in on interest in their finances; doing so literally gave them leverage and they used this leverage to subjugate all opposition in one form or another. The technological advances that laid the groundwork for European conquests on all fronts would have been much less effective without the financing and "over-there" expansionist growth model that usury afforded them. I would love to find (or create) comparisons of Islamic banking and the various Chinese financial systems that have existed with the debt-and-interest based model that took hold in England and in Europe. There are a few well-documented Islamic banking scenarios for which we have pretty good data going back several centuries. Not sure about China.

I haven't found any such things yet but I'm sure at least pieces of this idea have been fleshed out by someone somewhere - it's just too obvious. I've stumbled across several web pages that talk about debt-based money and interest as being weapons of mass destruction in some form or fashion but nothing comprehensive.

Perhaps I'll actually get off my ass, do a little more legwork and write something about this but I doubt it any time soon. This missive at least can mark a point in time when I had this thought - who knows what it will look like in a few years.