this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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Loan interests and money I disagree with. Unless we get to a point where everything is in abundance and commerce isn't needed anymore I feel like a common item we can agree the value of for goods and services is a pretty neat idea.
Similarly I don't think interest is inherently evil. If i lend you money to buy something large that will take years to pay off, I wouldn't want to lose a bunch of money with inflation. But predatory rates that bet on you defaulting can burn in hell. It's disgusting that the whole fintech industry exists purely to maximise interest and debt at the cost of those who depends on those services the most.
For loans interest I think it should be bog simple to give and receive a loan as in βyouβre borrowing $200. Please give me $210 by X dateβ and its done. No number that increases infinitely, the common person can easily understand it and it can be easily taught in schools.
Loan interest is one of the main reasons we operate in a "line-must-go-up" society right now. If you loan out money and require that that much money plus a percentage be paid back, you are requiring that money spent returns back a surplus somehow. Making even is considered a failure in this system.
yea and the enshittification of stuff is also a byproduct of chasing that compound interest, trying to satisfy that exponential growth is destroying the world.
There's nothing wrong with that in theory. It's just a way of making sure resources are being used in a productive way. But it doesn't actually work that well.
You have a point, but originally interest was both compensation for the lander for offering you the loan, and a way to mitigate risk in case you fail to pay. Without interest, why would anyone lend a random stranger some money? Interest is basically the only things that props up an unsecured loan.
Generally you would loan someone money without interest because the result would be mutually beneficial. We already do this in smaller social circles like our families, and then our close friends. The problem is that most lenders arent local and dont live in the community. They have no shared interest with the borrower.
In some cases communities do come together and raise funds interest free, and use them for something that benefits society in some way, we just wouldnt describe it that way normally.
believe it or not, it's very common.
Money being necessary is incidental to how our society is structured. There's a lot of ways society can and has functioned without a universal equivalent, regardless of the state of abundance.
Similarly, interest not being evil is actually fairly new and unique to modern society. It's pretty common historically and in different cultural contexts for interest-free debt to be a norm.
Which suggests these norms are likely specific to capitalism and its ideology rather than universal common sense.
Graeber's Debt and The Dawn of Everything are anthropological works relevant to this topic that you might find interesting.