Having been one of the ‘I have no sofa’ types in the past, and may be again in the near future…I have little sympathy.
I would have some sympathy…if she hadn’t doubled and tripled down on the stupidity.
Cigarettes cost money. If she smokes a pack a day (which seems to be the norm)…say cigs are 4 bucks a pack in Alabama or Arkansas…if she quits than she is 3/4 of the way to being able to make the payments on the sofa!
If you are low-wage or living on the dole (which I make no judgments about), then you must be prudent. I have used road-kill furniture. I have shopped at Goodwill and Salvation Army. Many of us at one time or another have had to forgo luxuries in favor of necessities. If you are poor, I have empathy. Been there, may be again.
If you are poor and buy a fucking smartphone with new speakers on usury credit , and then whine about it…nah, fuck off.
And there is plenty that can be done. Stores should display the full price, not the per-week price. People should be given back a portion of items that have been reprocessed, if those items are resold. If someone is near the end of their payment period and cannot afford a few payments, they should be able to work out a payment plan.
But really, these companies need to be shut down. They exploit a loophole that should be closed for the exact same reasons that we shut usury down.
Hey, Chetumal, our panties are still bunched about this point until we read your rebuttal. Please, don’t let us down! Tell us again why being obese is relevant to your rant?
The issue is: protection versus loss of freedom to make bad choices, for the poor.
On the one hand, the state could take away the temptation by outlawing such businesses as usurous. This will, effectively, mean people with bad credit cannot get such products unless they save up cash.
On the other hand, just as some may find the exploitation of the poor (and foolish) through usury objectionable, others may find prohibiting the poor from accessing credit objectionable: a form of paternalism.
Myself, I’m kinda ambivalent. Though I lean towards preferring there be at least some paternalism.
BTW, this is not by any means a problem of the poor alone - though the poor, with bad credit ratings, are naturally subject to the most usury; many of the people I know, with above-average incomes (in many cases, far above average) are apparently compelled by the temptation of consumer goods to live far above their means, in effect living paycheque to paycheque with (too) much going out in the form of payments for mortagres, car leases, and the like. These are people who are otherwise very intelligent … and I expect their financial plights would arouse even more scorn and derision than those of the poor.
Why is it okay to deny service to someone because of some immutable characteristic they have like stupidness? Should this person also not be able to enter contracts, seek employment, or make decisions for themselves?
If this article was only supposed to shine a light upon a situation, without being slanted against the store, it would just be a story of seemingly stupid people doing stupid stuff, and what would be the point of that?
I would be for requiring the store to list “Total of payments” next to current price, to allow people to make better informed decisions. But, if in the story the woman said “I knew the eventually total would be WAY more than the purchase price, but I really wanted that couch” would everyone posting here say “Well, she knew the costs, and she still bought it so she is just stupid and I have no sympathy for her” ?
I fail to see how that decision is any less stupid than blindly entering an agreement where you don’t know the total cost. In fact, it seems even MORE stupid because you can’t use “I didn’t know” as an excuse, and aren’t some of you advocating protecting stupid people from themselves? so apparently, this wouldn’t work either.
… Sure. It’s not like bedbugs have made a massive comeback the past few years or anything. There’s no way in hell I would trust curbside/Craigslist/Freecycle/Kijiji sofas that are FREE. :: Shudder :: I’d be dubious about many for sale, too; it’s less likely, but there are shitstains out there who wouldn’t hesitate to sell someone their bedbug-infested sofa. Thrift stores wouldn’t intentionally scam like that, but they can’t always closely inspect donations (especially when baby bedbugs are just 1/16").
Then a poor/low-income family has bedbugs, which can spread to other parts of the house. Eradicating bedbugs from a single home can cost thousands of dollars (if they had that much money, they wouldn’t need to get a secondhand sofa in the first place). Ooooh, and due to the (false but widespread) belief that bedbugs infest mainly dirty, slovenly areas, combined with societal attitudes that the poor are dirty/scruffy/shabby/gross, they’ll get to have even more contemptuous scorn heaped upon them.
No. Dumb people should have the freedom to enter into stupid contracts. But businesses should not have the freedom to offer stupid contracts. There’s a difference.
If you can’t lend money to stupid people at non-predatory interest rates, then fuck you. You’re not allowed to lend.
If that means stupid people can’t go deeply into debt paying interest on items they don’t need, then that’s bad…why?
Is it paternalistic? Yes. If someone can’t figure out why these deals are so horrible, or can’t stop themselves from agreeing to these deals event though they know the deal is horrible, then they’re obviously to stupid to be allowed to agree to such a deal.
Do we need to declare them incompetent and appoint a guardian for them? How about we just make it illegal to blatantly exploit them?
Again, the proof that they’re too stupid to be allowed to make this decision is the fact that they made this decision.
So if someone can’t get a loan from any regular sources to fix their car so they can get to work, and there are no businesses that lend money at high rates due to risk, what would you tell those people to do?
Except that some of the worst offenders (“payday” loan outfits) have been the subject of crackdowns in many states.
Schools should do more to prepare young people to be reasonably smart consumers. It’s not easy though if your target group drops out of school in 9th grade.
You’re looking for some sort of absolutist principle, and I think that way lies madness. Instead, there needs to be a balance.
As I understand it, about 30% of Americans have an IQ of 90 or less. About 5% have an IQ of 80 or less.
If there’s a business whose customers are overwhelmingly people who are dumb, I have no problem with limiting the ways that business does business.
Allowing such limits does not mean that suddenly the government is going to price-control every couch purchase in the land. It means that we have to decide where we set the limit. Right now, we allow contracts that are more predatory than I think we should allow. I think we should rein in such businesses, along with businesses like payday lenders and for-profit colleges, because they offer terrible products.
Indeed, because we bring about the tyranny of not being able to buy sofas at three times the going rate and the terrible suffering that entails. We’re practically the Hitler of sofas.
This is an excellent example of the philosophy that guides liberals.
When is anyone actually fairly held responsible for their inability to control themselves?
You know what my first bookcase was? It was a couple of planks scrap lumber with cinderblock separating them, junk my dad got for free from a construction project.
My friends had real bookcases. I had that.
But our outcomes should be the same, right? They bought bookcases on a whacky credit plan; I had planks. But they should be rescued from their desire to have good stuff. Right?
Bricker likes (or liked) to trot out the old idea about how conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, and liberals think conservatives are bad people. But I think this exchange illustrates another difference: conservatives tend to put a lot of value on principles. Liberals tend to put a lot of value on experiences.
Here we’ve got two options. In one, we uphold the principles of liberty, responsibility, free choice, and free markets, at the cost of knowing a lot of people are going to suffer and few are going to derive any real pleasure. In the other, we slightly limit liberty, free choice, and free markets, and deprioritize responsibility, for the benefit of knowing that it’s going to end some suffering.
We’re not talking about jailing people for thoughtcrimes here. It’s not a drastic limitation on liberty to say you’re not allowed to sell sofas at usurious rates.
I have no particular desire to rescue anybody. But I do have a desire to prevent greedy bastards from profiting off the stupidity of others. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Make a living without gouging your neighbor. Or be a Republican.
I agree. I have a feeling that if we were told that this woman has an IQ of 75, no one would be slamming her intelligence or calling out her “bad” choices. But because the reporter doesn’t say she’s mentally handicapped, we assume her bad choices must be the result of willful ignorance and character defect rather than factors beyond her control
Most poor people are not stupid, but a lot of them have received inferior educations and exposure to life. Poverty itself promotes social isolation, cognitive deficits, and impulse control. It is likely this woman is indeed “dumb”, but it’s not because she’s chosen to be this way.
Like i said above, if you took this women and explained how much more she would be paying for the sofa and she STILL decided to take it, what would you do? what should we do in that situation?
