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by m-i-l·2y ago·view on hn ↗
> "you lend money to someone for example if they need to buy food, and don't have the money, because you don't want them to starve? ... Charging for interests means that you are making profit of others poverty"

Let's not confuse commerce and charity, and within commerce let's not confuse lending with usury. Charity is gifting money with no expectation of anything in return, lending is temporarily transferring money for a mutually beneficial purpose, while usury is extortionate and exploitative. I would have thought your example of a starving person would come under old fashioned charity, but if not then lending isn't necessarily unreasonable.

2 comments
I see where you're coming from, what you've failed to address however is the point I'm making about lending by interest, would give an incentive to create both want and lacking.

If you're not allowed to profit from lending, very few people would lend money for luxury goods, for instance.

Giving to the starving person could be lending if you expect that person to eventually pay you back. Maybe it didn't rain on the other side of town so you give food to the families farming there so that they live - expecting that eventually it won't rain on your side of town and they will give you food so you can live.