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Zippy Catholic
Personal blog · zippycatholic.wordpress.comphilosophyeconomics
Zippy Catholic is a personal blog at zippycatholic.wordpress.com about philosophy and economics. Since 2019, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Usury FAQ (2014)”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Zippy Catholic's usury FAQ, a Catholic analysis of usury. It distinguishes loans backed by a borrower's personal liability from loans backed by specific assets, often to explain lending ethics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
"This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. Only technical details are missing." - Wolfgang Pauli, caption for a blank page
Most-linked posts?
- Usury FAQ (2014)6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-02-01
What Hacker News says?
That's true, but the usury back in the day was usually about loans to individuals. These days, you can bankrupt out of it. Traditionally, the Catholic Church has made a distinction between loans ultimately backed by an individual's ability to sell their labor for money (mutuum loans), and loans ultimately backed by assets (societas loans). For societas loans, such as a non-recourse mortgage or a business loan, there…
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “Regulators Shut Down Lending Platform (YC Alum) LendUp”Submitted Usury FAQ (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionZippy Catholic has a FAQ on this : https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-... His claim seems to be that usury is when interest is charged on loans where the lender has full recourse to the borrower in case of default.
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “Negative Rates Are Rewriting the Rules of Modern Finance”Submitted Usury FAQ (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-...
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “Fed raises rates by another 75 bps to fight inflation”If you'd like some interesting reading, take a look at the traditional Catholic analysis of usury: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-... . According to this modern summary, anyway, any interest-bearing loans that are personally guaranteed (such as credit card loans or student loans) are immoral. However, investment is permissible, as are collateralized loans (either against property, such a…
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah”I found this a very interesting discussion: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-... (And I'm not Catholic.) But in short, if I'm getting this correct, usury is lending for which the recourse of the loan is not limited to some specific and concrete piece of collateral. A home mortgage is not usury, because the recourse for the loan is repossession, and the loaner does not (in the ideal case) h…
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “Expensive Loans to Desperate People Built the $90B Payday Loan Industry”You may also find this Usury faq interesting: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-... It's from a Catholic perspective, but to a large degree the primary impact of that is just to take a step away from modern ideas and draw from a historical position not well studied or understood by other people. There is not very much "bible" or "pope" in it. It is also directly related to the topic at hand…
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “A Debt to Education”if you are genuinely interested in a different, historically significant (this was the Wests understanding of usury for over 1000 years) take on usury, this is a good place to start: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-...
Comment linking /2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
on “A Zoomer explains her generation's malaise to older generations”
