• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    What kind of debt? Is it immoral to owe someone a favour? Or is it immoral for someone to owe you a favour?

    Is it only immoral if there’s interest? If someone lends someone $500 to cover rent, that’s immoral? Is it more or less immoral to watch someone lose their housing when you could have helped?

    • theneverfox@pawb.social
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      8 days ago

      All immoral. You can give someone $500, they might give you back $500, maybe even more

      But you can’t have the expectations of repayment. That’s where it goes off the rails

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
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          8 days ago

          That’s the thing… Owing someone is the problem

          Helping is great. Counting favors is bad. Help, repay help, pay it forward… All great. Expect repayment? Now we’re back at the problem

          It’s funny how people keep litigating debt into more and more nebulous forms, but I’m just more and more convinced I’m correct. Debt is wrong, it’s evil. We should actively prevent it, in our thinking, in our language, in our laws

          You all are just too debt brained to understand, no one should be allowed to sell their future. From every angle, it just plays out worse than just not doing it

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            8 days ago

            “Debt brained”? Dude, “debt” has existed as long as humanity has existed. You’re the one who’s “debt brained” for thinking it’s a bad thing. That’s just society.

            In a society people do favours for each-other and what makes it a society is that the person who had a favour done for them acknowledges that as a member of that society, they should try to pay the favour back at some point, otherwise they just seem like a drain on that society. That doesn’t mean that you can’t also have gifts, it just means that sometimes aid isn’t given as a form of gift, it’s given with an expectation that at some future point the giftee will become the gifter.

            • theneverfox@pawb.social
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              7 days ago

              That’s just totally incorrect. Most people throughout history didn’t even use money, let alone debt. Taxes were paid in grain, livestock, and essentially community service

              Debt created money, but money is not as old as humanity. It’s not required, it’s not coded into our genes

              And counting favors is widely accepted to be shitty behavior. It’s transactional, it’s low trust

              You can just do favors, and call the guy who never helps out a lazy asshole. They’re unreliable so people eventually don’t want to help them, and we have all sorts of fairy tales about it

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                7 days ago

                That’s just totally incorrect. Most people throughout history didn’t even use money, let alone debt.

                You need to read “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber. Debt goes back a lot longer than money, and has been part of human existence for as long as that existence has been recorded.

                There is no human civilization without debt.

                • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                  7 days ago

                  I said that, money was created from debt, of course debt came first

                  What about the Incas? I’m sure there’s others, but we know a lot about them and their economic system, and they only fell because of outside interference

                  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                    7 days ago

                    You also said:

                    Most people throughout history didn’t even use money, let alone debt

                    So, why not just admit you’re not well informed on this subject and leave it there?