Money (and Slavery) Make the World Go Round

By Moshe Feiglin

The man sitting opposite the courteous bank clerk needs a loan. The clerk checks his ability to pay off his debt. “Bring me your salary slips”.  “Do you own an apartment?”

In other words, the bank clerk is investigating how much the customer can be enslaved. If the customer is eighty years old, or if, Heaven forbid, terminally ill – he won’t be receiving the loan.

Just like in the slave markets. How much is an old or ill slave worth?

But if the customer is capable of returning the debt, he will receive the loan and exit the bank a happy man.

What happens next?

Hocus  pocus, a few swift movements on the keyboard and the money already appears in the modern slave’s account.  Where did it come from? Many will say that it came from the Central Bank or from deposits of other customers. But that is not correct. Most of the money simply comes from the fingertips of the bank clerk. Straight out of the air, the numbers appeared and entered the account of the happy slave.

That is how money is created in modern economies – through banks and loans.

But money has value. If it is nothing more than an invention of the bank clerk, what gives it its value? The State? The Central Bank?

In truth, money is not an invention. It is not simply faith in the state that gives money its value. There is something very real behind money: The enslavement of the customer. After all, we work hard to pay back our loans. Our work is very real, much more than a piece of paper or the touch of a keyboard. The work to which we are committed backs up those numbers; the money that has now entered the economy.

In other words, modern money primarily represents – slavery. Our slavery. Isn’t there a better system?