Lending isn't productive in and of itself. There is a nice gradient stretching from freeloading rent-seeker to visionary/socially responsible investor. Not seeing the difference and condemning the former is a problem.
The difference is in how many other people get fucked along the way as the investor gets their return.
Little is more naive than the broad claim "collectivism doesn't work" because the USSR and other states tried some form of it and failed.
Even if you are willing to massively oversimplify things and look at the cold war and all the real-politik business of the last century as a fair contest between the ideas of collectivism and capitalism, "which system wins in a war" is not exactly the same thing as "which system maximizes prosperity." Nor are we actually limited to picking between the two.
If you think you can repay this cost to society with volunteer work or otherwise, this might work.