Like nostr:npub1qfkcklnmes45z75y7y8dkud5yll8vp5eq5ysk9rmgqdxeasv8unsrfj6kq said, a thing can be immoral yet legal. Or vice versa.
If lender and borrower agree, let them be.
But usury remains immoral, since no well informed person would borrow money from his future more than what he’s getting. You’re getting 10 gold coins, your future self is losing 11 gold coins. No one would make that deal, unless the borrower is uninformed, and the lender is exploiting that, and that’s how it becomes immoral.
If you’re a well informed person, you’d be incredibly high time preference to take such loan. But it doesn’t make sense for a well informed person to be this short sighted.
Finally, we’re not arguing to ban loans. Simply saying usury, aka charging interest, is immoral, and I personally would ban usury if I ever get my own kingdom.
P.S.
Only reason usury looks like a good thing in our time is because fiat has distorted our perception of reality. It never was a good thing, and it never will be.
Why is it immoral to want to be paid for use of my money?
When I wanted a new car, I preferred to have the car sooner and pay someone to use the spare capital they had available, than to make do with a car that didn't serve my needs until I saved up enough for an outright purchase.
There's no moral content here. It's just consenting adults with different preferences interacting with each other.
We’re not arguing the morality of loans, you’re right, there’s no moral content.
We’re arguing the morality of usury, aka charging interest on loans, and it is immoral.
