Wages and Usary are different types of money

What is money?

The most obvious feature of money is that you can exchange it for goods. And why would you do this? If apples grow in my back garden why buy apples?

It is because (1) theft is illegal i.e. I cannot take apples from someone elses garden and (2) because it saves the trouble of having to pick them myself.

Essentially then: money is the power to get another to do work for us restrained within property laws.

With money at root we buy other peoples time.

There are a whole complex of issues underlying this. There is the belief that people have talents. Some people are good at writing music so we are compelled to purchase their music and time because we cannot do it ourself. Some people have physically issues which mean they are unable to perform the actions required to even stay alive... they are especially compelled to purchase other peoples time. Time is differently valued depending upon whether there is a demand for what we do with it.

We gain the ability to purchase other peoples time by selling our own time. At root in the monetary system we are exchanging time.

In a simple game this sounds like fun. Unfortunately money can be gained by other means than expending your time. Money can be gained by trading and investment. This is not the same kind of money as that which exchanges time, yet it is an identical currency in current economic theory. Thus the rich can earn the right to buy other peoples time without having to trade their own time.

This is the old system of exploitation and slavery that we have sort to get away from. A class of people who have the right to determine the actions of others without any real existential involvement themselves. By existential I mean that giving your time for someone is the giving the most central part of your existence and humanity to them. But if they have that right through anything other than their own human commitment to the exchange then it is slavery and builds inhumanity and alterity into the system.

The Bible says that usary is not allowed. If derivative incomes were paid in separate currency to wage and sales income it is obvious how parasitic and meaningless this currency would be. Capital raise through shares cannot be used to buy anything other than other shares and we see the true criminal and insidious nature of this apparent wealth.

I am opposed to all income based on investment. The Bible seems to be correct to outlaw this. Our western societies seem to be wrong in their liberal attitude to it. But of course the law makers get their funding from this kind of income so they are never going to stop it!