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“The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural object of it. Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to earn interest.” — Aristotle, Politics, 350 BC

Usury is as old as civilization and so is humanity’s instinctive disgust toward it. Yet today, usury isn’t just tolerated, it’s the operating system of the global economy. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the modern mortgage system. Nothing exposes the rot more clearly than the proposal for 50-year mortgages.

The Ownership Illusion: Who Really Holds Title to Your Life?

Let’s begin with first principles and an uncomfortable question: What does it mean to “own” property?

In any coherent theory of property rights, ownership implies exclusive control, the right to use, modify, and transfer an asset without permission from external authorities. Ownership means the thing is yours, answerable to no one.

By this definition, most people don’t own their homes.

The Dual Landlord System

Landlord One: The State

Property tax isn’t taxation, it’s rent. This isn’t semantic hair-splitting; it’s definitional accuracy.

A tax is a one-time levy on a transaction or income. Rent is a recurring payment for the right to occupy space controlled by another. Property “tax” is perpetual, mandatory, and enforceable through seizure. Miss three payments and the state auctions your property to strangers. You’re evicted from land you supposedly “own.”

This rent never sunsets. You pay until death, then your heirs pay. The payment rises arbitrarily when the state needs revenue. You have no negotiating power, no alternative supplier, no exit except to sell and pay rent elsewhere.

This is not taxation. This is tenancy.

The state is your landlord. The deed is a rental agreement. “Homeownership” is a legal fiction maintained to preserve the psychological comfort of the middle class while extracting wealth with less resistance than explicit rent would generate.

Landlord Two: The Bank

A 50-year mortgage means the bank holds legal title to your property for half a century. You’re not buying a house, you’re entering a 50-year lease-to-own agreement where you:

• Handle all maintenance and repairs

• Pay all insurance premiums

• Cover all property tax (rent to Landlord One)

• Assume all market risk (if values drop, you’re underwater)

• Face eviction (foreclosure) for missed payments

The bank contributes nothing after the initial ledger entry. They don’t maintain the property, don’t insure it, don’t improve it, don’t assume risk. You carry all obligations. They extract all profit. You call this “ownership.”

The Triple Extraction Machine

You are not a homeowner. You are a revenue stream for a two-headed extractive apparatus:

1. The State takes its cut through property tax, perpetual rent that rises with assessed value

2. The Bank takes its cut through interest, a 50-year annuity secured by your life’s work

3. You absorb all costs, all risks, all responsibilities while both landlords enjoy superior claim to “your” property

Medieval serfs had one lord. You have two. Medieval serfs paid one-third of their harvest. You’ll pay 2.8x the property value over 50 years, split between bank interest and property tax.

The Age Trap: Designing Debt for the Desperate

Who qualifies for a 50-year mortgage? Let’s do the arithmetic of human mortality.

The Life Expectancy Math

The average life expectancy in the US is approximately 76 years (lower for men, slightly higher for women, with significant variance by race and socioeconomic status).

Scenario One: The Young Professional

You’re 25, just starting your career. You take a 50-year mortgage. Final payment: age 75, if you live that long. You’ll own your home free and clear a decade after the official retirement age.

But at 25, you likely lack:

• Substantial income history (most lenders want 2+ years)

• Down payment savings (requiring a decade of work for most)

• Credit history sufficient for a half-million dollar loan

• Job stability to convince lenders of 50-year repayment capability

Reality check: Few 25-year-olds will qualify.

Scenario Two: The Realistic Professional

You’re 35. You’ve worked for a decade, saved a down payment, established credit, and proven income stability. You take a 50-year mortgage. Final payment: age 85.

This debt will never be repaid.

Average life expectancy is 76. You’ll make payments for 41 years and die at 76, still owing hundreds of thousands in principal. Your children inherit not a home, but a financial nightmare, either continue payments or sell immediately, hoping equity covers the balance.

You spent four decades paying for a house you never owned.

Scenario Three: The Desperate Mid-Career Borrower

You’re 45. Previous housing fell through, divorce destroyed finances, job loss wiped out savings, or you’re just finally stable enough for a mortgage. You take a 50-year mortgage. Final payment: age 95.

This is mathematical insanity.

You won’t make it. Nobody does. You’re signing up for a debt your estate will settle. The bank knows this. They’re counting on it. When you die, the property gets sold, the bank gets paid from proceeds, and any remaining equity, if it exists, goes to your heirs.

The bank carries virtually zero risk. You carry mortality risk, market risk, income risk, health risk, and longevity risk.

The Qualifying Truth

The only people who can qualify for 50-year mortgages are those who won’t live to pay them off. The only people who should qualify are those who don’t need them.

Young borrowers can’t qualify (insufficient income, credit, savings). By the time you can qualify, the loan term extends beyond your statistical life expectancy. This product is structurally predatory, targeting the financially vulnerable who are desperate enough to accept terms that guarantee they’ll die in debt.

The Beneficiary Analysis: Cui Bono?

Who benefits from 50-year mortgages? Follow the money.

The Banks Win

Maximum Interest Extraction

At 7% interest on $400K:

• 15-year mortgage: ~$252,000 in interest

• 30-year mortgage: ~$558,000 in interest

• 50-year mortgage: ~$1,116,000 in interest

The bank collects an additional $558,000 from the 50-year borrower compared to the 30-year borrower for the exact same initial loan. This is pure profit. The bank does nothing additional, no extra work, no extra risk, just extends the payment schedule and doubles the extraction.

Multi-Generational Revenue Stream

Most borrowers will die before payoff. When they do, the estate settles by selling the property. The bank gets paid from proceeds. If there’s a deficiency, the bank has first claim on other estate assets.

The bank has engineered a financial instrument that:

• Pays above-market interest for decades

• Remains secured by appreciating collateral

• Transfers to estates upon borrower death

• Carries minimal default risk (secured debt + long payment history = equity cushion)

Portfolio Stability

A 50-year mortgage is a 50-year annuity for the bank, predictable cash flow spanning half a century. They can package these into mortgage-backed securities and sell them to institutional investors seeking stable long-term returns.

Wall Street salivates over this product. It’s a 30-year MBS with 66% more revenue and comparable risk.

The Government Wins

Tax Revenue Multiplication

A 50-year mortgage means 20 additional years of property tax collection per property. At $6,000/year in property tax (conservative for a $500K home), that’s an extra $120,000 extracted per household over the loan term.

Multiply by millions of homeowners and you’re looking at trillions in additional tax revenue over generations. The state has a direct financial incentive to promote longer mortgages because they extend the property tax revenue stream.

Economic Activity Stimulus

Longer mortgages = more “affordable” monthly payments = higher qualifying purchase prices = higher property values = higher property tax assessments = more revenue.

It also keeps money velocity high. Instead of paying off mortgages and redirecting income to savings, investment, or consumption, households keep feeding monthly payments to banks, who then circulate that capital through the economy. The government can tax that circulation repeatedly.

Political Stability

Debt is control. A population locked into 50-year mortgages:

• Can’t strike (might lose the house)

• Can’t take career risks (need stable income for payments)

• Can’t relocate easily (selling costs, equity trap)

• Can’t retire early (payments until 85)

• Can’t resist (foreclosure is existential threat)

Debt is obedience. The government benefits from a compliant, immobile, risk-averse population locked into permanent financial obligation.

Real Estate Investors and Developers Win

Anyone holding property benefits from policies that inflate prices. Longer mortgage terms increase “affordability” without increasing actual buyer purchasing power, they just enable more debt.

When buyers can “afford” higher prices through longer terms, sellers capture that affordability through higher asking prices. Housing costs don’t drop; they rise to meet the new credit limit.

Current property owners see asset appreciation. Developers sell new construction at inflated prices. Real estate investors flip properties for higher values. The entire industry benefits from debt expansion.

Insurance Companies Win

Longer mortgages = longer mandatory insurance periods. Homeowner’s insurance, mortgage insurance (PMI for low down payments), disability insurance (to protect payment ability), life insurance (to cover debt after death).

A 50-year mortgage means 20 additional years of insurance premiums across multiple products. The insurance industry has a massive financial stake in extended debt.

Who Loses?

The borrower.

That’s it. That’s the list.

Everyone else profits from your extended debt servitude. You pay triple the house value, build equity at glacial pace, die in debt, and leave your children either nothing or a financial mess to untangle.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. The 50-year mortgage is a wealth transfer mechanism from workers to banks, government, insurers, and existing property holders.

You are not the customer. You are the product.

The Inflation Machine: How Housing Became Unaffordable

Housing prices have detached from economic reality. In 1970, the median home cost roughly 2-3x median household income. Today: 6-8x in most markets, 10-15x in high-cost areas.

What happened? Financialization happened.

The Property-as-Investment Death Spiral

Housing serves two functions:

1. Use value—shelter, the basic human need

2. Exchange value—investment, the speculative asset

When exchange value dominates use value, you get the current crisis.

Phase One: The Credit Expansion

Fractional reserve banking allows banks to create loans without corresponding deposits. As the Bank of England admits in its own report: “Rather than banks lending out deposits that are placed with them, the act of lending creates deposits.”

The bank doesn’t lend you anyone’s savings. They create a deposit in your account with keystrokes, then charge you interest on money that didn’t exist until you signed the paperwork.

This is the foundation of the problem.

When banks can create unlimited money for property purchases, that new money competes for limited housing stock, driving prices up. More money chasing the same number of houses = higher prices. Basic economics.

Phase Two: The Collateral Feedback Loop

As property prices rise, existing owners can borrow against increased equity. They use those loans to buy more property or consumer goods, pumping more money into the economy. More money = higher prices = more equity = more borrowing = more money = higher prices.

This is the multiplier effect on steroids.

Each new loan creates new deposits, which get counted as money supply, which gets loaned out again, creating more deposits. The money supply expands exponentially while housing supply expands linearly at best.

Price increases are inevitable.

Phase Three: The Speculative Mania

Once housing becomes an “investment,” behavior changes:

• People buy bigger than they need (future appreciation)

• Investors buy multiple properties (rental income + appreciation)

• Foreign capital flows in (wealth preservation)

• Corporations buy housing (portfolio diversification)

• Institutions buy housing (rent-seeking)

Housing transitions from basic need to financial asset class. Wall Street packages mortgages into securities. REITs buy neighbourhoods. Private equity firms acquire entire subdivisions.

Use value (shelter) becomes secondary to exchange value (investment return). This is catastrophic for affordability because investment demand has no ceiling, speculative capital is functionally unlimited.

The Path Forward: Resistance Through Exit

So what can be done?

Option One: Political Reform

Difficulty: Impossible

The system is designed to prevent reform. Banks fund campaigns. Lobbyists write legislation. Regulators are captured by industry. Media is owned by financial conglomerates.

Any politician who seriously challenges banking power either loses funding and elections, gets smeared by the mockingbird media, faces career destruction, or in extreme cases, faces physical threats.

The system has antibodies against reform. Don’t waste energy here.

Option Two: Legal Challenge

Difficulty: Catastrophic

In 1968, lawyer Jerome Daly challenged his mortgage foreclosure with a simple argument: “The bank never loaned me money. They created credit on their books. They gave me nothing of value.”

The bank admitted in court they created the loan as a ledger entry and charged interest on invented money. Daly won. Justice Martin Mahoney ruled the mortgage null and void.

Then the system struck back: decision overturned on technicality, Daly disbarred for life, Justice Mahoney found dead eight months later (aged 55, allegedly “intoxicated” on a fishing trip). The case was memory-holed.

The message: Challenge the banking system at your peril. The law protects the bank, not you.

Option Three: Individual Resistance

Difficulty: Hard but Possible

Refuse to play the game. Exit the system to the greatest extent possible.

Refuse Long-Term Debt

If you must borrow, never exceed 15 years. Better: save and buy with cash. Best: recognize that housing at current prices is a trap and opt for alternatives (living small, mobile living, geographic arbitrage).

Yes, this means sacrifice. Yes, this means lifestyle adjustment. But it also means freedom. No landlords. No debt. No extraction.

Minimize Property Tax Exposure

Live in jurisdictions with low property tax. Alternatively, rent in high-cost areas while building wealth elsewhere. Or embrace mobile living (RV, van, sailboat) to minimize state extraction.

Property tax is unavoidable if you own real estate. So either minimize exposure or don’t own.

Build Wealth Outside the System

Don’t use housing as your wealth storage mechanism. It’s illiquid, taxed perpetually, and subject to government seizure.

Build wealth in assets the state can’t easily confiscate, that don’t require perpetual rent payments, that appreciate without creating tax obligations.

Exit the Currency

The entire scam depends on fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. As long as your wealth is denominated in inflatable currency, you’re vulnerable to debasement.

Store wealth in assets with fixed supply. Hard assets. Scarce assets. Assets that can’t be printed by central banks or created by commercial banks.

Form Alternative Communities

Find others who understand the extraction machine. Build parallel institutions. Share resources. Create mutual aid networks. Reduce dependency on the system.

The Amish understand this. Intentional communities understand this. Religious communities understand this. Tight-knit immigrant communities understand this.

Community resilience reduces vulnerability to financial coercion.

Option Four: The Bitcoin Exit

Thankfully for the last 16 years, an alternative monetary system has existed.

A system where:

• Money supply is fixed (21 million, no more)

• No central authority controls it

• No one can print more

• No fractional reserve banking possible

• Transactions are peer-to-peer

• Ownership is cryptographically secured

• Confiscation requires violence or coercion, not legal paperwork

• It operates globally without permission

This is the exit.

You can’t fix the fiat system. It’s captured. But you can opt out. Store wealth where banks can’t create infinite supply. Where governments can’t print more to pay debts. Where your purchasing power can’t be silently debased through inflation.

This isn’t investment advice. This is exit strategy.

The 50-year mortgage is a symptom of a diseased monetary system. You can spend your life fighting symptoms, or you can exit the disease.