i am not sure, but is not this swapping like interest. Like swapping of dates, without an intermediate medium, is considered Riba (interest)

into jail?

The question is not about 2 individuals doing business with one another, but about a banking system which is based on interest.

If Abdul and Bashir work for their money and produce something useful, they can do whatever they want if they don´t hurt each other or anybody else.

They might also leave the money to their children, who if it is enough won´t have to work for a living.
Their children might invest the money in some enterprise or other become so a part owner, helping the entrepreneur with his financing of tools, resources and labor.

If they are risk averse, they should not invest all their money into the same enterprise which might get broke. If they invest cleverly or have a reliant and knowledgeable stockbroker, they will never loose all their money.
And so the children of Abdul and Bashir can go on and have an enjoyable life without any useful work, just from the fruits of their fathers´labor.

It´s not communism we are talking about in Islamic banking.
So you do not have to be afraid that somebody comes and takes your property, unless it is a share in the central bank.

In Islamic banking there are also loans, mostly short time very small loans for private people and 5 year loans for larger businesses. People pay fees to get those loans, to reimburse the bank for it´s effort, but the fees are fixed and do not grow over time like interest-payments.
If somebody has to default, he only owes the principal to the bank, his debts will never grow.

If the business loans would be beyond the limit set by law, then the bank can also invest into a company and become a shareholder. The bank then gets the profit share according to ownership, but also bears the risk of the company going broke.

Islamic banking does not hinder anybody from making profit from an investment and it does not hinder the flow of capital from the people who own spare capital to those who need it for being invested in their enterprise.

And as I said, for those who are afraid of risk taking there are ways to avoid loosing the capital.
There is for instance an insurance for small money investors which gets them their investment money back, if something goes wrong.
They have to agree on turning over their money for a fixed time, often not more than a few months and then be insured, that they won´t loose it.

The bank will then use their money, hopefully wisely,to invest in economic enterprises.

But the bank is not allowed to just make money from money, no gambling operations on the international stock exchanges all over the world.

This kind of speculative behavior of western finance creates bubbles and busts, and the real productive economy gets broke because it is more profitable to make money from money, than actually producing something useful.

and what is Qazi's income stream?
Is this a trick question? I have a question: Where can you live on $60/month?

Is an income stream affected by riparian rights? If not, then I don't think they have done anything illegal in the California. Maybe Utah.
-----------------------
"Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly."

OK, good we've made some progress. Erlenda has agreed that there is nothing wrong in Abdul and Bashir swapping their streams of income.

Lets see what other responses we get ... then I'll move to Part 2 of the argument.

I was just explaining how the Islamic banking system works.

It´s the reality not some hypothetical story.

And besides what about treating me and the others like adults, instead of making up some Arab sounding names in some children story, as if we could not understand an economic argument?

Are you an economist, who thinks everybody else is too stupid to get into the mysteries of this mystical science?

Let's not get personal here. There was no intention to insult anybody. My regrets to those who feel insulted. Let's focus on the real point.

Your admission that there is nothing wrong in the swapping of income streams is actually quite important. We'll get there in due course of time.

Neglecting all of my subsequent argument, you just focus on my first sentence, saying that 2 people can do whatever they want with their money.
But once again, I mean 2 individual human beings can do this, but if they involve an institution in their deal this is another matter.

An institution is not a person and it should not be allowed to have the same individual rights as a person.
So of these 2 individuals use a banking institution for their deal, I am opposed to it.

Money is not a commodity but a matter of exchange and must be and therefor the laws concerning banking must be different than the laws concerning commodities.

OK, Erlenda, lets just talk in terms of "entities". An entity could be an individual, a baseball club, a business with a few employees, a small credit union, a big bank, or whatever.

Lets talk about the swapping of income streams by entities.

You seem to be bringing the size of the entities into the picture. You're saying that the swap is OK, but only if the entities involved are small. So then you'd need laws to define what's a small entity and whats a big entity, and so on.

My response is that in general, to have an efficient market, you need to have lots of buyers and lots of sellers. Beyond that, I would not bring in any extraneous criteria.

2 hypothetical individuals and you asked me, if those individuals should go to jail for a deal they make with each other concerning so little money as an avarage of 100$ or 60$ every month.
And because I´m a good hearted person, I didn´t want these "poor little Arabs" to go to jail.

An entity can´t go to jail.

And in our western world not even the cheating, lying directors of large entities which have defrauded thousands of people of their life-savings or brought on power-cuts which might have caused many people to suffer or even die, will go to jail, because "those entities" are deregulated from any responsibility towards the community and protected by privacy laws, so investigators can´t find out who owns the crap entity and who profits from the lying and cheating.

The state in every community all over the world is supposed to make laws which protect the honest individual from robbery by someone who wants to get rich at the expanse of somebody else.
Libertarians seem to think, that laws against street-robbery are just fine, but laws against financial robbery are in some way taking away their freedom of choice and harming their business.

Well if such a person is in the business of cheating, then they might indeed harm his business.
So let him go and lament, together with the street robber whose business is also harmed by the risk of going to jail.

I'm sure ways can be found to punish entities, be they individuals, small businesses, baseball clubs or whatever.

But that's not the point - we are trying, by a process of logical inquiry, to determine whether a certain transaction is ethical or not. The particular transaction that we are focussing on is the swapping of a risky income stream for another smaller, but less risky income stream.

you have been using a rhetorical trick on me and I fell for it, mostly because Germans don´t learn this kind of trick-talk in school, that´s an American prerogative. I´ve only seen it on TV;
now I tell you again what I think about using interest taking as a tool to "swap income streams".

It sounds very innocuous at first, like a win-win situation.
But of course it never can be done on a individual basis. So a bank will get into it and it looks at first like everybody is happy.

But in every society it has gotten out of control after a while, because people had to default on their loans in times of crisis and then the interests started to pile up.
And then came the big take-over of property by the money-men.
Besides, there isn´t even enough money created for all the loans to be payed back at once. It´s only the principle that gets created.

After a while it also becomes more interesting to take the money and gamble it on some "put and call" transactions and what other stock market gambling tools have been invented, that keeps the money away from the real productive industry or agricultural projects.
I have heard that hedge funds are the best money destruction machine there is right now.

And since it makes the most money for the gamblers, if the market is volatile, then there will be manipulations of share values, which have no connection to the real production value.
And the market becomes a roller-coaster.

And the majority of the people, the ones who actually produce something or render services, will loose more and more to the big players, who haven´t done an honest day of work in their lives.

Oh yes, and the big players in the monopoly game will go crazy with arrogance and actually believe that they deserve all they can get, because they are so much more clever than everybody else, and that those losers down there have barely a right to live, since the not so clever people, who actually believe that one should play by the rules for the benefit of the whole of society, are so much deeper down on the ladder of evolution.

By a process of logical inquiry:
No, it is not ethical, because this "swap of income streams" does not take into consideration the long-term consequences of the financial instrument of "interest".

Well let's assume Abdul and Bashir have discussed this with their families, and everyone agrees this is a "fair trade".

So, there is NOTHING "UN-ETHICAL" about this trade at all (assuming it's not linked to any illegal activities).

But, that doesn't mean the government, or CIA, or MOSSAD, or MI5/6 WON'T have a problem ---- since it deals with "CONTROL" and POWER.....

...... let me explain it this way, EVERY SINGLE power "entity" will not allow any significantly large "transaction" to occur. They will "deem a profit" to have been made (even though none has) so they can extract TAXES.

If not, then the 'Jewish' "authorities" would levy FEES and FINES, or whatever they can pull out of their TIGHT ASSES to extract more money from they sheeple.

Hope that clarifies things. So in summary:
__________________________

1) No, it's not unethical.

2) Even if it's NOT unethical, doesn't mean the secular donkey won't be haggled to death....

The question is moot, since Abdul and Bashir were brutally murdered last night in their sleep by elements of the ZOF (ZIONIST OCCUPATION FORCE).

The ZOF, using the usual excuse of "looking for terrorists", used a Caterpillar bulldozer to knock a string of houses in Occupied Palestine early this morning in Hebron.

A total of four homes were destroyed and 11 Palestinians crushed to death by the bulldozer.

The only "stream" Abdul and Bashir have is the stream of red blood, flowing out of their crushed and lifeless bodies.

The ZOF issued a statement saying they would "investigate" the matter.

Yes, thats a valid point. The zionists look like they're getting even more desparate after Putin's visit to Iran. Lets hope they dont do anything rash.

Do you have a link to that gruesome pic of the Palestinian kid that had his head crushed by an American made, Israeli operated bulldozer?

Would like to post that on my blog.

Thanks

greg

Flow of money?
First of all I don't understand your question so I can't answer it.

How can you own an "income stream", what do you mean by that? A job, company or oil well perhaps?

I cannot image someone owning a "flow of money", only the money itself. Or something that can earn him money like a company. If you trade property fairly it is just barter and usually ok.

Individual/Family/Society/Humanity
You implicitly imply that acts (like a business transaction) between two parties will only effect those parties.
This is very wrong. Many things you do will involve not even only their relatives but many people around them.

According to the same logic adultery doesn't harm anyone outside their families because it only involved the two adulterers.
However the effects of adultery will be felt by society especially if many people will do it.

Answering your questions
So since I don't understand what you mean by:

• * Owning an "income stream"
• * Qazi

I cannot really answer your question(s).

Should what they have done be made illegal?

Again I can't really answer this, however I'll try.

Imagine one homosexual.

Now imagine the majority or everyone in society being homosexual.

Unless some drastic measures are taken like breeding facilities or using women only for their womb, society will have collectively suicided themselves in a few generations.

This is also the same reason usury is so damaging now. Not only does everybody participate one way or another, you have no choice and it is pushed by the ones in charge.

You have to keep in mind that you cannot make morally unjust exceptions the law, without the risk of it spiraling out of control.
Like you cannot in practice allow only a bit of usury or a bit of adultery or a bit of theft or just one guy illegally squatting on your property it will eventually spiral out of control.

Flow of money?
First of all I don't understand your question so I can't answer it.

How can you own an "income stream", what do you mean by that? A job, company or oil well perhaps?

I cannot image someone owning a "flow of money", only the money itself. Or something that can earn him money like a company. If you trade property fairly it is just barter and usually ok.

Individual/Family/Society/Humanity
You implicitly imply that acts (like a business transaction) between two parties will only effect those parties.
This is very wrong. Many things you do will involve not even only their relatives but many people around them.

According to the same logic adultery doesn't harm anyone outside their families because it only involved the two adulterers.
However the effects of adultery will be felt by society especially if many people will do it.

Answering your questions
So since I don't understand what you mean by:

• * Owning an "income stream"
• * Qazi

I cannot really answer your question(s).

Should what they have done be made illegal?

Again I can't really answer this, however I'll try.

Imagine one homosexual.

Now imagine the majority or everyone in society being homosexual.

Unless some drastic measures are taken like breeding facilities or using women only for their womb, society will have collectively suicided themselves in a few generations.

This is also the same reason usury is so damaging now. Not only does everybody participate one way or another, you have no choice and it is pushed by the ones in charge.

You have to keep in mind that you cannot make morally unjust exceptions the law, without the risk of it spiraling out of control.
Like you cannot in practice allow only a bit of usury or a bit of adultery or a bit of theft or just one guy illegally squatting on your property it will eventually spiral out of control.

Here's where that photo came from...

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22264

Thanks for the linnk. Was able to upload that grim picture of life in Occupied Palestine to my blog.

This is what NEEDS to be seen on CNN and FOX, but it is a reality that will never see the light of day here in America.

The American MSM is controlled by the Zionists,
and is only setup to feed a steady stream of BS propaganda that always shows Israel as the poor, little ol' me country that is minding its business... blah, blah, blah.

What a crock. Besides the US, Israel is the next most deranged, dangerous and murderous regime on the face of the earth.