Alex Tabarrok talks about old associations between sodomy and usury (both non-pro-creative activities apparently). He's talking about Aquinas, Smith, and Bentham.
This is also interesting from the Keynes/Ferguson angle, though. Keynes - who was sympathetic to if not in literal agreement with the Scholastic position on usury - completely breaks Aquinas's framework!
Out of curiosity Daniel Kuehn, how did you learn that Keynes was sympathetic to Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic position on usury? Was it from one of the following papers, or from your history of economic thought class at American University?
ReplyDeletehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1728225
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1406842
From reading Keynes!
DeleteI don't believe it came up in class and I haven't read these papers.