Quote from: BBanzai on August 05, 2011, 06:20:21 AM

I would dearly love to know at what point saving your own excess production for long enough to reinvest it properly became known as "hoarding".

I don't care about the word. The difference between hoarding money or hoarding other goods is that when you hoard money you're making the whole society wait for your decision on how do you want to be compensated for the services you've already provided. That is important and affects other people's decisions.

Quote from: BBanzai on August 05, 2011, 06:20:21 AM

I would dearly love to know at what point saving your own excess production for long enough to reinvest it properly became known as "hoarding". I would also be delighted to have explained to me how borrowing money at interest is EVER in my best interests. Yes, we do 7 day or 15 day or 30 or even 90 day terms. But paying a late fee, or interest on it is acceptable only as a punishment for changing a contract after it is accepted. NOT a sensible part of the original contract. There is nothing to prevent me from accepting 30 day terms for face value and nothing more.

But is not about morals, is about what lenders can ask. Is how markets work.
If you introduce a regulation that makes starting a new bakery very complicated an expensive, bakers can and will rise their prices because of the artificial lack of competition. There's nothing wrong about it (well, yes, the regulation).
While lenders can claim the interest they will do it. The "regulation" here is the money system people chose to use.

Quote from: BBanzai on August 05, 2011, 06:20:21 AM

Unless, of course, I was a usurious parasite that fed on interest payments while making nothing else of value but symbols of other peoples' wealth.

They made something of value at some point. But if they decide to never redeem that value and lend it at interest, the value to be redeemed will grow until its growth unsustainable. It's just how exponential growth works.
If you were immortal, you could save one coin once, keep on working and consuming your whole wage until the initial loan grows big enough through compound interest, and live on the interest of the big sum forever.
An ounce of gold lent at 5 % interest looks like this in 300 years: 1.05^300 = 2 273 996.13
This of course is unsustainable and that's what business cycles are about.