It’s not unusual for me to have old ideas rolling around in my head, and this week I’ve been thinking about usury. Strictly defined, usury is the practice of charging exorbitant interest on loans. At various points in history, the act has been considered sinful, criminal or merely poor taste.
My informal polling indicates few people are familiar with the term anymore, but I think we’re all familiar with the practice, if not in the strict sense of moneylending, then in the practice of assigning prices which far exceed the value of goods or services rendered.
The idea of usury often comes to mind when I’m standing at the concession counter of a movie theater. Adrienne and I like to go to the movies, and when we do, we like to share a small popcorn and soda. It’s an indulgence, I know, but there it is.
I’m standing at the concession counter, ordering a small popcorn and teenaged boy in the red vest speaks the line he is compelled to speak by the multinational conglomerate that owns the theater. He says: “A medium popcorn is only 25 cents more.” Only 25 cents more. Only 25 cents more than what? Than the two dollars and seventy-five cents I’m already paying for a bag of stale popcorn? I always want to start shouting something to that effect, but he’s just a kid, earning minimum wage, doing what he’s told to do, so I just give him a wan smile and shake my head.
The idea of usury comes to mind when I see my friends shelling out three hundred dollars a month for a putzy little green Saturn. Oh yeah, I’ve seen the ads on tee vee and in the magazines and I know Saturn is supposed to be friendly and goofy and down-to-earth, but the bottom line is Saturn is a subsidiary of General Motors, which will charge you $20,000 for a dull and unattractive vehicle, and that is just way too much money for a car. Saturn may claim to be a different kind of car company, but it smells like the same old usury to me. Needless to say, I drive a 12-year-old car that I bought for twelve hundred bucks.
Since I’m an environmentalist, every couple of years I get ticked off at a major oil company. If it’s not Exxon is Alaska, it’s Shell in Nigeria. Inevitably, there are calls for a boycott ad just as inevitably, there are voices that protest that a boycott won’t hurt Exxon or Shell, but will hurt your local gas station owner. Not the guys in Houston, but the guy right in your town – your fellow citizen, your neighbor, your buddy.
This guy – my neighbor, my buddy – is the guy who now charges me for air. Compressed air. If I want to fill the tires on my bicycle or car, I’ve got feed quarters into his little yellow box. Well, of course, you say, he’s got to pay for the compressor and the electricity that runs it.
So I feed the quarters – it used to be a quarter, now it’s fifty cents – into the box and I buy air. You get five minutes for fifty cents, but I only need two to top off my tires, so I stand there for three minutes with the hose in my hand, wishing I had something else to inflate.
So what’s my point? In a real world sense, I can stand a little usury. I am neither so financially wounded nor morally offended that I cannot recover. I know that what I see as usury, most people see as the free market setting a price the traffic will bear.
My worry is that if we lose sight of each other as individuals in small transactions, how will we remember to care for each other in times of real crisis?
Only 25 Cents More
It’s not unusual for me to have old ideas rolling around in my head, and this week I’ve been thinking about usury. Strictly defined, usury is the practice of charging exorbitant interest on loans. At various points in history, the act has been considered sinful, criminal or merely poor taste.
My informal polling indicates few people are familiar with the term anymore, but I think we’re all familiar with the practice, if not in the strict sense of moneylending, then in the practice of assigning prices which far exceed the value of goods or services rendered.
The idea of usury often comes to mind when I’m standing at the concession counter of a movie theater. Adrienne and I like to go to the movies, and when we do, we like to share a small popcorn and soda. It’s an indulgence, I know, but there it is.
I’m standing at the concession counter, ordering a small popcorn and teenaged boy in the red vest speaks the line he is compelled to speak by the multinational conglomerate that owns the theater. He says: “A medium popcorn is only 25 cents more.” Only 25 cents more. Only 25 cents more than what? Than the two dollars and seventy-five cents I’m already paying for a bag of stale popcorn? I always want to start shouting something to that effect, but he’s just a kid, earning minimum wage, doing what he’s told to do, so I just give him a wan smile and shake my head.
The idea of usury comes to mind when I see my friends shelling out three hundred dollars a month for a putzy little green Saturn. Oh yeah, I’ve seen the ads on tee vee and in the magazines and I know Saturn is supposed to be friendly and goofy and down-to-earth, but the bottom line is Saturn is a subsidiary of General Motors, which will charge you $20,000 for a dull and unattractive vehicle, and that is just way too much money for a car. Saturn may claim to be a different kind of car company, but it smells like the same old usury to me. Needless to say, I drive a 12-year-old car that I bought for twelve hundred bucks.
Since I’m an environmentalist, every couple of years I get ticked off at a major oil company. If it’s not Exxon is Alaska, it’s Shell in Nigeria. Inevitably, there are calls for a boycott ad just as inevitably, there are voices that protest that a boycott won’t hurt Exxon or Shell, but will hurt your local gas station owner. Not the guys in Houston, but the guy right in your town – your fellow citizen, your neighbor, your buddy.
This guy – my neighbor, my buddy – is the guy who now charges me for air. Compressed air. If I want to fill the tires on my bicycle or car, I’ve got feed quarters into his little yellow box. Well, of course, you say, he’s got to pay for the compressor and the electricity that runs it.
So I feed the quarters – it used to be a quarter, now it’s fifty cents – into the box and I buy air. You get five minutes for fifty cents, but I only need two to top off my tires, so I stand there for three minutes with the hose in my hand, wishing I had something else to inflate.
So what’s my point? In a real world sense, I can stand a little usury. I am neither so financially wounded nor morally offended that I cannot recover. I know that what I see as usury, most people see as the free market setting a price the traffic will bear.
My worry is that if we lose sight of each other as individuals in small transactions, how will we remember to care for each other in times of real crisis?