/lit/ - Literature

>>20948290
>"Metaphysical principles" aren't causing the crisis: it's the bankers

The Usurer is violent against God because he believes he can magically manufacture value out of nothing, whereas in reality only God is the source of value. To charge interest is thus a sort of satanic parody of God’s creation of the universe ‘ex nihilo’ (out of nothing). Karl Marx was right insofar as he knew that value had to be based on something realer than an essentially fraudulent manipulation of finances; he identified this real basis with human labor.

Canto XIV-XVII
>Third Ring in the Seventh Circle of Hell: USURY
>Punishment: Crying in a great Plain of Burning Sand scorched by great flakes of flame falling slowly down from the sky