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Comment by 033803throwaway

The Kenyans are right.

What they need is money, not loans, and, in particular, not loans against consumption rather than production, which is what broadly available credit inevitably devolves into. (Look at college loans, which started off ostensibly as an investment in productive assets and has devolved into financing four years of heavily curated consumption followed by crushing student debt.)

Even loans against production are dangerous and eventually lead to debt peonage and wealth concentration, as we have seen time and time again, from roman times onward.

The problem is usury, and there is a long, historical argument about it that is completely ignored in the west. This is because history is written by the victors, and the usurers won. We are all usurers (or aspiring usurers) now.

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