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The same thing is going on in rural India to this day... and in plenty of other dark corners of the globe. But here and now, in the developed world’s sophisticated conduct of business, industry, and commerce under the rule of law and the light of transparency, there should be no need for a Jubilee. And yet... and yet ... Maybe, as we’re pondering “Jubilee,” we should be considering how many of the probably never-to-be-paid debts that modern people have incurred are, in fact, the result of predatory and coercive lending practices. There are, after all, other kinds of predation than financial. And there are other kinds of coercion than brute force... • What about politically predatory loans made by government agencies looking to score populist points by luring poor people into impossible mortgage debt and suckering the young into gigantic student loans? • What about strategically coercive loans made by rich nations to poor nations to keep those poor nations in thrall? • What about World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans made for the sake of “political stability” to keep predatory and coercive dictators in power? A Jubilee in the Biblical sense might not be the best basis for action. But the moral ideas that underlie the Jubilee remain a good basis for thought.
These lenders wanted the “vigorish.” They wanted the “juice.” (Literally, if you were growing grapes or olives.)
Among those thoughts is that we are only temporary visitors to the Earth and our job is to take care of it in the short term, make it fruitful, and avoid permanently ruining the place... not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the posterity that we’ll never meet. Leviticus 25:23 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.
Paul Noth/ The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank. Used by permission.
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