Your Debt Isn’t Meant to Be Repaid — Here’s Why
When you think about debt, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Is it your growing credit card balance?
Or perhaps the stack of bills piling up on your dining table?
Maybe it’s the realization that no matter how much you crunch the numbers, you’ll never catch up?
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According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Americans collectively owe over $17 trillion in debt.
T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N.
That figure is so vast it’s difficult to comprehend.
To put it in perspective, if all 213.6 million working-age adults in the U.S. worked for $30 per hour to pay off the debt, each person would have to work for 2,662 hours.
That’s essentially giving up more than a year of your life just to pay down the debt. Not to cover your living expenses or pay taxes to Uncle Sam.
Just debt.
And that assumes a wage far above the current minimum standard. In reality, it would take several years to pay it off at current wage levels.
This tells us that debt isn’t meant to be repaid. It’s like a Gordian Knot of finance, designed to be impossible to untangle.
The idea of repaying debt is a myth. It would require a power structure that simply doesn’t exist. To get out of debt would mean being an equal — or rather a peer — with your lender.
You are not. You are their asset. They rely on you to continue generating profit.
This essay will explore how debt is an instrument of power that fosters inequality. Specifically, it will examine how debt has historically been used to strip debtors of honor and justice. By accepting debt as a personal responsibility, we’ve become prisoners of a power dynamic that’s hard to escape.
The history of America is one of debt — not freedom.
Something often overlooked in the study of American history is that America wasn’t founded on democratic principles. On paper, our founding documents promote the ideals of freedom and equality. But in practice, early Americans came as debtors, which meant they lived in a society that treated them as such.
The Atlantic Slave Trade is the most glaring example of the injustices America was founded upon. To be reduced to slavery, people had to be taken from their communities and stripped of their dignity. What you might not know is that this process — dehumanizing one person to sell them to another — is rooted in the need to repay a debt.
According to David Graeber’s analysis in Debt: The First 5000 Years:
During the 1760s alone, about a hundred thousand Africans were shipped down the Cross River to Calabar and nearby ports, where they were put in chains, placed on British, French, or other European ships, and transported across the Atlantic — part of roughly one and a half million exported from the Bight of Biafra during the entire Atlantic slave trade. Some were captured in wars or raids, or simply kidnapped. Most, however, were taken due to debts. (Graeber, David. Debt. 208.)
The origin of slavery is rooted not in malice, but debt. People enslave others in an attempt to repay debt. Without that debt, there would be no purpose for enslaving them.
Slaves weren’t the only ones to come to America in bondage. To gain passage to the New World, indentured servants sold their labor. Some chose to enter indenture to escape poverty. Others to escape debt.
It’s also worth noting that Georgia, the last colony to be founded, was created as a refuge for English debtors. Instead of wasting away in a debtor’s prison in London, the poor could go to Georgia and try their luck as colonists.
Even the elites of Boston weren’t immune to the tyranny of debt. The entire premise for colonizing America was to repay England’s war debts. American colonists were taxed without representation because that was the goal. America was designed to generate tax revenue for King George III.
Unless you can trace your lineage to the few entrepreneurial landholders and merchants who colonized the New World, your origin story is likely one of debt, slavery, or a combination of the two.
The structural injustices present in our society today stem from debt. Economic inequality and class divisions are built on a historical narrative where debt has become a tool of power. A ruling class exists at the expense of the indebted class below them.
Your indebtedness isn’t a sign of personal failure. It’s a legacy you’ve inherited from your ancestors.
The perpetuation of debt eliminates individual honor, widening the gap of inequality.
Debt isn’t just a number on your credit statement. It symbolizes an obligation. It represents someone lending you money with the expectation that you will eventually repay them.
Today this is codified as a credit score. A lender assesses your creditworthiness — how trustworthy you are — before lending you money. A low score indicates a low level of confidence that you can repay new debt.
Before credit scores, trust was measured by your word and your honor. Your ability to repay debt demonstrated your honor within your community.
This idea of honor has largely been stripped away by the financial aspect of debt. After all, we don’t live in close-knit communities anymore. Few of us know our neighbors, let alone how honorable they are.
For debt to exist today, it has to be represented by something more than honor. Trust is measured in money. Initially, this came into being as physical notes — paper money — used to buy and sell things. But today, debt and the trust it represents are increasingly represented by securitized assets held by large institutional banks.
This is where the power structure has changed. Debt has become a tool to subordinate. Trust is pushed to the limits. It doesn’t matter if you can repay a debt. What matters is that you can consistently make monthly payments toward repaying it.
It’s about consistent cash flow.
When you look at debt as a function of trust and how it’s changed to become something to take advantage of, it raises an important question: is debt moral?
Is it moral to lend money to someone, knowing they can’t repay it, just to generate a profit?
Looking at our collective debt burden, this is where we stand now. But this isn’t how it’s always been.
Historically, usury — charging exorbitantly high interest on debt — was prohibited. The Bible is explicit about this:
“‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and cannot support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you. Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit. (Leviticus 25: 35–37)
And in Islam, paying interest is considered a sin:
“O believers, take not doubled and redoubled interest, and fear God so that you may prosper”. (Surah Ali ‘Imran 130–132)
It wasn’t until the advent of capitalism that debt became an asset that capitalists could leverage for profit. If you’re a banker, you’re in the business of making money rather than evaluating trust. It’s not your problem if someone can’t repay their debt — it’s theirs.
This is where the power balance has shifted. Debt was originally intended to be repayable because it symbolized honor and trust within your community. That’s no longer the case.
Now debt is a tool that reshapes the power balance. It turns debtors into criminals and de facto wage slaves. In today’s society, being in debt isn’t just dishonorable; it’s also inferior.
Final takeaway.
Debt created for profit isn’t intended to be repaid. When you repay a debt, you’re no longer an asset to the lender who holds your debt.
Why would they make it easy to repay?
Looking at debt through the lens of power and control raises important questions about the morality of debt itself, particularly regarding one’s responsibility to repay an unrepayable debt.
We no longer live in a society built on communal trust. Instead, trust has been transformed into financial instruments that determine our success or failure in life. We’re only as valuable as a three-digit score from the Fair Isaac Corporation.
Your societal value is now linked to your ability to manage debt. This is what honor and dignity have been reduced to. Consequently, it has created a power structure that inherently subordinates one group of people to another.
As long as debt exists, so will inequality. Because that’s the foundation upon which modern debt is built.
Of course, just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean it must continue.
Debt jubilees were practiced by the Israelites and under secular law in ancient Babylon.
Islamic banks have developed a novel way to generate profit through equity sharing rather than interest. An Islamic bank’s profits are tied to the success of its borrowers.
There is a precedent for restoring honor and dignity in society by eliminating debt.
The question is: do we have the courage to change course, not just for ourselves but for our descendants?
And if not, how much longer can we tolerate debt knowing it will never be repaid?
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