Bill’s Commentary:
“Your entire world stops without credit…”
From Shakespeare to Smith: Why Credit Exists in Every Western Society
When Polonius tells Laertes in Hamlet, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” perhaps Shakespeare was speaking from family experience. In the early 1570s, his father, John Shakespeare, was accused in court several times of lending money at usurious rates. While, in modern terms, he settled one case, he was fined in another. It is unclear if these cases were connected to the decline of Shakespeare Sr’s business, but he managed to get into debt himself, echoing Polonius’ warning. Under the laws at the time, usury, the practice of charging interest on debts, was called “a vice most odious and detestable.”
Yet by the time Adam Smith wrote his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations two hundred years later, credit was an established element of commercial life. Smith devoted an entire chapter to “Of Stock Lent at Interest.” He noted that the borrower viewed the loan as capital, which could either be consumed or, more productively, used as capital for enterprise. In the intervening two hundred years, credit had become an economic institution.
Bill’s Commentary:
“They honestly believe they are in the right…”
Theft Is Now Progressive Chic
In 1785, Immanuel Kant introduced his famous “categorical imperative.” Put simply: Act the way you want others to behave. This dictate, a version of the Golden Rule, has been a bedrock of moral philosophy for centuries. But for the New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, Kant’s “categorical-imperative-type thing” no longer applies. Moral rectitude, in some left-wing corners of the commentariat, is out; flagrant disregard of the social contract is in.
Yesterday, The New York Times posted a video of a conversation featuring Tolentino, the pro-communist streamer Hasan Piker, and the Times opinion editor Nadja Spiegelman, under the headline: “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” It began with Tolentino, a highly successful author, admitting to shoplifting lemons from Whole Foods. “I think that stealing from a big box store—I’ll just state my platform—it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action.”
BillHolter.com 