• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    The overall wealth in society. Usury produces absolutely nothing of value, and purely exists as a legal means to serve as a drain on resources. Landlords are such an egregious example of usury that they have been near universally hated for as long as they’ve existed, even by liberals.

    • jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.worksBanned from community
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      3 days ago

      Theoretically loans are just a form of gambling on individuals repaying the principle (or on making more off whatever you needed the loan for than the cost + interest) and the interest is just an obtuse way of giving the house an edge. Therefore similar to gambling I believe it provides entertainment value, which is rarely calculated accurately.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        No, when I speak of value, I don’t mean some abstract level of personal enjoyment or utility that is unique from person to person. I mean value as represented by raw materials and an average hour of labor in an industry. Trying to abstract away usury as “entertainment” is such a silly justification for a parasitic system that purely exists for individuals to leach off the labor of others.

        • jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.worksBanned from community
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          3 days ago

          it provides short term capital to purchase tools to make more goods, such as a loan to get a tractor so you can harvest/plant hundreds of times more crops as you would by hand. the interest is (in theory) covering the risk of default. also entertainment is the justification for child actors and artists existing.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            You’re again confusing use-value with value proper. Loans have utility, but no value. Usury is a drain on resources. “Risk” has absolutely nothing to do with value except for the fact that values are normalized around their social averages. Entertainment is entirely different from loans, and further is just like any other commodity, the value of which is regulated around the socially necessary labor time and raw materials that goes into its creation and not some abstract utility.

            Here’s a good basic summary of what I’m talking about.

            • jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.worksBanned from community
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              3 days ago

              that theory seems fundamentally flawed as it would only work in the long term and makes no accommodations for the short term with technological innovation we live in now

                • jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.worksBanned from community
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                  3 days ago

                  preventing people from being able to take large (few tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars) risks in hopes of refinulous profit (trillions in profits from not needing as many workers)

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    3 days ago

                    Risk has no bearing on value. Technological progression lowers the necessary working time to replace the means of subsistence for workers, which wages are regulated towards, meaning a greater ratio of the working day can be used on surplus value extraction. Ie, if machine A can create 100 widgets per hour per worker, and a worker needs 300 widgets per day worth of value to survive, then the working day of 8 hours has 5 hours surplus labor. If machine B ups that to 300 widgets per hour, then that becomes 1 hour of necessary labor and 7 surplus, increasing profit. Risk has no bearing, nor utility.

                    All of this can be handled publicly, without a need for profit.