Usury is really necessary and of benefit to no group of persons; and if all lived virtuously there would be no need of it. Not only is usury unnecessary, but it is a positive and terrible evil. It has a disastrous effect on the city and on the social organism. The public usurers are usually foreigners, and they drain the wealth of the city into other lands. Again, usury concentrates the money of the community in the hands of few, just as if all the blood in a man’s body ran to his heart and left his other organs depleted.
From Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Harvard, 1957), but don’t ask me what work of St B’s it’s from because I didn’t photocopy the bibliography. Bad me.
April 12, 2008 at 8:56 pm
So it looks that an economic doctrine is about price (from costs) and property (and its use). I would put usury under price.
It would be interesting to find a theory that would be:
1. Ethical (According to the social teachings of Catholic Church)
2. Complete (Gives a definite individual and collective purpose to its objects and agents and interactions between them)
3. Computable (Offers instruments that allows the comparison with real life cases)
Note that from 3. could stem predictability and so it would have the form of a science.
Did anyone formulate a theory with these characteristics already?
Thanks.
April 12, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Right. Um.
How about. You define what you mean by a theory in this particular case.
Back on Monday. The wee (?wee) frees have some things right.
Happy Weekly Easter!