Banking and Landlording Are Mathematically Unsustainable and Will Inevitably Destroy the Global Economy

Let's crunch the numbers and learn the truth about economic exploitation

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My day job? I’m an author focused mostly on justice issues.

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 literally wouldn’t have the resources to rent and read books.

If everyone rented books and expected back more books than they lent, the world would eventually become illiterate.

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That’s literally 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, if banks loan money and expect the money back with more money than they lent, the vast majority will inevitably become broke.

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That’s literally 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.

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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,” by the way, is just bankster-rebranded usury.

“Rent,” by the way, is just land-lorder-rebranded usury. (In fact, the word for rent and interest are derived from the same root words in German, French, Finnish, Spanish, Dutch, and Babylonian.)

So why is usury so bad for the economy?

Well, when you lend something and get it back, you haven’t actually contributed anything to the economy.

But because you’re charging interest (be it money-usury or house-usury), you’re still receiving real wealth and value from society.

In other words, you’re a parasite on the productive economy. You’re a blood-sucking leech, a thief who steals but doesn’t give.

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 while loaning hoarded houses? Not if you want your economy to be mathematically sustainable and your politics to be generationally democratic.

If you don’t contribute as much value as you take from the economy, you help destroy the economy.

America is an island. The world is an island. There is a limited number of dollars, houses, and real 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 10+% 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. 
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 the former to serve 25–30 years of hard labor, and doling out a life sentence for the latter.

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.

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Global economic destruction

The world is now in over $300 trillion in debt.

How did this happen?

Because of usury.

Banksters are loaning money to mortgagees and students and people will medical bills and expect the money back with interest-usury.

Land-lorders are loaning houses and expect houses back with rent-usury.

But because banksters and land-lorders aren’t actually contributing anything 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 we do about this?

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The antidote to usury

The bandaid solutions are to schedule debt jubilees or have a nice big war.

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 ban usury.

Banning interest on money, banning rent on houses.

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 less than they’re currently paying in rent. The rest would rent usury-free (IE at cost) from a wide variety of municipal, religious, or Daman Model not-for-profits using the British almshouse model.

Getting rid of bankster interest is not only economically possible but wildly preferable. Purging financialization from the human necessity of shelter is not only a moral imperative but a mathematical imperative as well.

If we allow 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.

If we want to save freedom, wealth, democracy, the nation, and the real economy, we must ban usury.

In the meantime, we must joyously refuse to participate in making the usury problem worse, by divesting ourselves of rental properties, real estate stocks, banking stocks, and bonds. Today.

To participate in usury is to rob your brother.

It is to destroy democracy.

It is to enslave your children.