Christians Need to Understand That Banking and Landlording Is Mathematically Unsustainable and Will Inevitably Destroy the Global Economy
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Christians Need to Understand That Banking and Landlording Is Mathematically Unsustainable and Will Inevitably Destroy the Global Economy
It's time for us to repent, stand up, and speak out
My day job? I’m a Christian author.
I sell books to readers.
But imagine if, instead of selling my books, I only loaned books to readers and expected them to pay me back with two books.
If that’s how the book business worked, eventually a handful of monopolists would own all the books in the world and everyone else wouldn’t have the book-resources to rent and read books.
If everyone rented books and expected back more books than they lent, the world would eventually become illiterate.
That’s exactly what bankers do with interest
Picture yourself on a deserted island with nine strangers.
A murderous gangster pulls up on a hyper-yacht and throws you each $10 in one-dollar bills.
“It’s a loan. Do business amongst yourselves. I’ll be back in a year, and you all owe me 10% interest. If you can’t pay, I will re-possess some of the assets you pour your hard-earned time into this year… or worse. Get to work, peasants.”
He takes off. Everyone stares at the horizon.
You say what everyone’s thinking. “If there are only $100 dollars to go around, and at the end of the year we will collectively owe $100 plus 10%, that’s $110. We’re going to be ten dollars short…”
So, instead of cooperating, collaborating, and working together, because the ten of you have been forced into the rigged money-rental game, you spend the next year competing and fighting and warring against one another.
You get up earlier, so they get up even earlier.
You work later, and they work even later still.
You all spend a huge amount of time constructing houses and canoes and gardens, building your assets sure, but mostly trying to just seize that extra 10% you owe.
The year ends. You have all lost a huge amount of time and have suffered and sacrificed and competed because of the extractive gangster and his rigged money-rental game. You have compromised your values, taken advantage of others, cut quality, marketed dishonestly.
Person #1 steps up and pays her $10+$1.
Person #2 does the same.
$10+$1.
$10+$1.
$10+$1.
Everyone steps forward and pays.
Now it’s your turn.
You step forward… and you have zero dollars, because everyone was better at playing the rigged money-rental game.
Or maybe not.
Maybe you’re awesome at the rigged money game.
In that case, you get to watch someone else suffer and die.
Congratulations, I guess?
Just like with books, when banks loan money and expect the money back with more money than they lent, inevitably everyone except the banker will become bankrupt.
That’s exactly what land-lorders do with rent:
Picture yourself on a deserted island with nine strangers.
A murderous land-lorder pulls up on a hyper-yacht and drops ten Tiny Houses or cabins or trailers or whatever on the beach.
“These houses are a loan. Do business amongst yourselves. I’ll be back in a year, and you all owe me rent at say, 10% of the value of your rental house. If you can’t pay, I will re-possess the house and leave you homeless… and more. Get to work, peasants.”
He takes off. Everyone stares at the horizon.
You say what everyone’s thinking. “If there are only ten houses to go around, and at the end of the year we will collectively owe a house plus 10% of a house, that’s eleven houses. We’re going to be a house short…”
So, instead of cooperating, collaborating, and working together, because the ten of you have been forced into the rigged real estate rental game, you spend the next year competing and fighting and warring against one another.
You get up earlier, so they get up even earlier.
You work later, and they work even later still.
You all spend a huge amount of time building canoes and raising coconuts so you can earn that extra 10% of a house you owe.
The year ends. You have all lost a huge amount of time and have suffered and sacrificed and competed because of the extractive gangster. You have compromised your values, taken advantage of others, cut quality, and marketed dishonestly.
Person #1 steps up and pays her house plus 10% rent.
Person #2 does the same.
House+10% rent.
House+10% rent.
House+10% rent.
Everyone steps forward and pays.
Now it’s your turn.
You step forward… and you have nothing, because everyone was better at playing the rigged real estate rental game. The land-lorder seizes your house and makes you homeless… but you still owe him 10% of a house, so he decides to take all your canoes and coconuts as well, and you starve to death.
Or maybe not.
Maybe you’re awesome at the rigged real estate rental game.
In that case, you get to watch someone else suffer homelessness and watch someone die in poverty, but only after a lifetime of toil to enrich a land-lorder.
Congratulations, I guess?
Just like with books and money, if land-lorders loan houses and expect the houses back with more “house” (rent) than they lent, the vast majority will inevitably become broke.
Interest is destroying the world
Did you know that there’s a word for this type of business model?
It’s called usury.
Usury has an actual definition:
Usury is lending anything and expecting back more than you lent.
“Interest” is just bankster-rebranded usury.
“Rent” is just land-lorder-rebranded usury, an exploitative holdover from the feudal era. (In fact, the word for rent and interest are derived from the same root words in German, French, Finnish, Spanish, Dutch, and Babylonian.)
The Old Testament bans charging interest to fellow Jews, and Jesus not only affirms this command but elevates it, saying to lend even to your enemies and expect nothing in return.
Remember: God’s loving commands exist to protect and provide for us.
So why does the Bible forbid usury? Why is usury so bad for the economy?
Well, when you lend something and get it back, you haven’t actually contributed anything new to the economy.
But because you’re charging interest (be it money-usury or house-usury), you’re receiving extra real wealth and value from society. It creates an imbalance. You took more than you gave.
In other words, you’ve become a parasite on the productive economy. You’ve become a blood-sucking leech, a thief who steals but doesn’t give. We’ve all done it. Usury is so deep in the economy that it’s nearly impossible for most people to understand that entire nations lasted for hundreds of years without out.
Land-lorders especially hate being branded as usurers. One of their many (many) myths is that they “provide a service.”
Should builders get paid for building and selling houses? Absolutely.
Should plumbers get paid for unclogging toilets? 100%.
But should house-monopolizers get paid for extracting usury from loaning hoarded houses? Only if you want your economy to be mathematically unsustainable and your politics to be degenerate from democratic to despotic.
If you don’t contribute as much value as you take from the economy, you help destroy the economy.
We’re on an island
America is an island. The world is an island. There is a limited number of dollars, houses, and real biological wealth. But we collectively owe more dollars than exist, more houses than exist, more wealth than exists. Usury creates a mathematical impossibility.
Every one of America’s 23,916,662 land-lorders is demanding to be repaid a house plus XX+% more of a house every year. Every one of the world’s untold number of banksters is demanding to be repaid money plus more money every year.
That’s why house prices keep going up and will rise to $10 million in our lifetime.
That’s why rent prices keep going up.
That’s why the price of everything keeps going up.
That’s why we can’t get rid of poverty and bankruptcy and homelessness.
Our collective debts grow faster than our collective means to pay.
Usury enslaves all mortgagees and renters in debt peonage, forcing would-be homeowners to serve 25–30 years of hard labor, and doling out a life sentence for renters.
We cannot simply “work harder” and labor our way out of this math-trap. Usury-based debts always outpace our means to pay.
That’s why we are all slaving to survive. Usury is killing us — picking off the weak and poor first — and slowly working its way up the chain.
And how do Christians respond?
We guilt the poor.
The moralistic tones with which Christians speak about debt and "overspending" just to pay the bills is heartbreaking-- not only in light of biblical jubilee and Christ’s unconditional grace, but especially considering we live in a usury-based economy that mathematically requires the suppression of wages, the taking on of interest-bearing debts to make ends meet, and the bankruptcy of hundreds of thousands of people each year.
In a usury-based economy, it is cruel to guilt and shame the poor for being poor. It smacks of Dave Ramsey bootstrap-ism, and we need to collectively confess and repent of it. (Dave Ramsey, by the way, is a genius: His secret to becoming a millionaire is to live cheaply and simply so you can weaponize your capital to exploit the poor. This, in turn, creates more people in desperate need of his programs.)
Global economic destruction
The world is now in over $300 trillion in debt and it will continue to climb until we have a jubilee or another world war.
How did this happen?
Because of the love of money and the sin of usury.
Banksters are loaning money to mortgagees and students and people will medical bills and are demanding the money back with interest-usury.
Land-lorders are loaning houses and demanding houses back with rent-usury.
But because banksters and land-lorders aren’t actually contributing anything new to the real economy, there’s always a shortfall of actual real wealth to pay them off.
So that’s why everyone — renters and mortgagees alike — is constantly borrowing more and working our lives away just to stay housed, and why inequality and homelessness and poverty are the mathematically inevitable result of any economy that allows usury. Usury turns humans into hamsters, spinning on a never-ending wheel in order to generate wealth for parasites outside the real, productive, contributive economy.
As Proverbs 22:7 says: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.”
It’s been this way for all of human history without exception. Every society that allows usury automatically creates inequality, poverty, homelessness, and eventually descends into serfdom where the assetless masses own nothing and have to slave for the propertied elites just to survive. This inevitably leads the masses to seek out a strongman who promises them freedom, but who ends up delivering dictatorial tyranny.
Every. single. time.
Athens and the Thirty Tyrants.
Rome and the Caesars.
Germany and the Nazis.
And now it’s America’s turn to seek a strongman to “rescue” them.
If you allow usury to grow unchecked, total destruction is inevitable.
So the question is: What the heck should Christians do about this?
The antidote to usury
The bandaid solutions are to schedule regular debt jubilees (like the one after WWII that allowed Germany to recover faster than the victors)… or have a giant brutal war that kills off the creditor class.
But there’s also an ultimate fix, and there’s no point beating around the bush about it.
Civil, moral, ethical, mathematically literate, democratic societies must do what everyone with a working conscience and logical facilities knows deep down must be done:
We must obey the Bible and ban usury.
Banning interest on money, banning rent on houses. Or, as Deuteronomy 23:19 puts it: “You shall not charge interest on loans, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything else that may earn interest.”
Make usury illegal, then fine those who break the law.
If we banned usury, house prices would fall drastically and the vast majority would be able to own for far less than they’re currently paying in rent. The rest would rent usury-free (IE at cost) from a wide variety of federal, state, county, municipal, religious, community-based, or co-operative not-for-profits using the tried-and-true usury-free British almshouse model.
History shows us that getting rid of bankster interest is not only economically possible but wildly preferable. Purging the financialization of for-profit land-lording from the human necessity of shelter is not only a moral imperative but a mathematical imperative as well.
If we allow the sin of usury to continue, we will go where every nation in history that did the same has gone: Into workaholism, inequality, poverty, homelessness, and assetless serfdom on behalf of the propertied elites, until enough of the nation seeks out a populist strongman who promises them freedom, but who ultimately ends up delivering dictatorial tyranny.
God’s laws and Jesus’s teaching exist to protect and provide for humanity and connect us more to God and each other. If we want to save freedom, wealth, equality, democracy, the nation, and the real economy, we must ban the sin of usury.
Will the wider secular society every go for it? Secular kingdoms who fought usury with interest bans and jubilees remained stable for millennia, so perhaps an enlightened nation or two might actually read a history book and try what works. Perhaps even some Christian servant leaders will stand up and speak out in the political arena. We shall see.
In the meantime, Christians must joyously refuse to participate in making the usury problem worse, by immediately divesting ourselves of rental properties, real estate stocks, banking stocks, and bonds. Then, if we really want to make things right, we can pull a Zacchaeus and give the proceeds to benefit the poor we’ve been unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) robbing for years.
To participate in usury is to rob your brother.
It is to destroy democracy.
It is to enslave your children.
Jared Brock is an award-winning biographer, PBS documentarian, and the cell-free founder of the popular futurist blog Surviving Tomorrow, where he provides thoughtful people with contrarian perspectives on the corporatist anti-culture. His writing has appeared in Christianity Today, Relevant, The Guardian, Smithsonian, USA Today, and TIME Magazine, and he has traveled to more than forty countries including North Korea. Join 25,000+ people who follow him on Medium, Twitter, and Substack.