Homo Economicus

     Charging interest on loans of money to Christians, or for that matter to any neighbor, turns the whole world into a population of strangers, which is what we have in our time; what Thomas Hobbes termed belum omnes contra omnia (the war of all against all).  In this market, called "free" (because it has been cut loose from the chief restraint on greed, the ban on usury), we devolve from the Lord's chosen people under the gospel dispensation, to a sub-human species defined mainly by our selfish appetites and acquisitions:  we devolve into the "consumer," homo economicus.