Worzel's World- Tenants and slaves and the culture of debt

Over the years I have heard countless opinions asserting that owning a property is preferable to renting one. Rent, they say, is dead money. 

I couldn’t agree more. However, very few understand that when in possession of a property with a mortgage they are more of a tenant than those who rent or lease. Their particular landlord does not have to fix the rot in the deck or replace a faulty light fitting. A mortgage gives the illusion of ownership without the reality and any interest paid on the principle loan is also ‘dead’ money. Possibly more dead than any rent. 

In many instances a renter’s landlord will be local and what money is passed around may also come around. There may be a personal relationship, a friendship even, between landlord and tenant which can be of benefit to both parties. However when interest on a mortgage is paid the money disappears from the immediate community and usually heads offshore to line the pockets of multinational corporations and their well-heeled investor shareholders. 

Money serves its primary and necessary function when it represents goods and services. It is merely a token of trade. 

When capital itself becomes a tradeable commodity the eventual result is that all available wealth ultimately becomes the possession of those with the most capital. With the progressive deregulation of the world’s major financial corporations the speed with which this happens has accelerated. The practice of usury has become so pervasive that now hardly anyone ever asks: Is this right? Is this necessary? Is this any way to run a functioning economy?’ 

Where once people went to war to defend their liberty they now go cap in hand to the bank to sell it and so the culture of debt has become an accepted facet of modern life. This is the major flaw in our system of western economics. Every major religion admonishes the practice of usury yet Christian, Buddhist, Moslem and Hindu are in equal measure slaves to the usurers. 

If you have a mortgage or indeed are in debt of any sort that demands interest payments, you are, at least in part, a slave. Not only have you ceded ownership of what you use today you have also pledged future earnings to maintain that status quo. 

Shakespeare (Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry) was right, as were a million Scottish Uncles since. Debt is the scourge of humanity.

I had a particularly good maths teacher in my school cert year. He made the class perform a simple sum well within the capability of even the poorest mathematician. Every 15-year-old should be made to do this: A man borrows $200,000 to buy a house at a modest 5 percent per annum. He earns a net $20 per hour for his work. How many hours must that man work to pay the interest on the loan?

For that many hours this hypothetical man, like too many actual men, is a slave. None of his time, or the money that represents it, can be used to feed his family, educate his children or support his community. It simply adds to the accumulated wealth of the usurers who have produced nothing to obtain it.

To cite a local example, our local council raised illegal loans to the value of around $80 million using, without their consent, Kaipara ratepayers and their properties as collateral. Government appointed commissioners are now trying to place the burden of repayment of both principle and interest on those (ratepayers) who neither knew of nor consented to these loans. 

It is right that money loaned should be repaid, but by who? And should there be an interest component added? Unconstrained usury has reached its zenith under the ‘fractional reserve’ banking system where banks loan out many times the value of their deposits. Gradual enslavement to debt is the inevitable consequence. 

When banks bankrupt individuals and companies (which they do all the time) if insufficient capital is raised from the sale of assets to repay outstanding loans the bank takes a loss and everyone walks away free. When a company fails (usually through too much debt) investors lose their investment but are still free to work and earn on their own behalf. Not so the debtor – their present and future work hours are already committed to the payment of compound interest. 

Many individuals as well as councils, governments and companies, through access to credit have sold their tomorrows to consume more today, or was that yesterday? That’s a pity, but it was their choice. However I refuse to pay interest on debt I did not incur. I am already too busy paying for my own mistakes to spare the time to be enslaved by the mistakes of others. 

prof_worzel@hotmail.com