I was wondering when the Horatio Alger bullshit was going to start flying. I wish it hadn’t come from you, Bricker.
Ok. We won’t rescue people from their poor decisions. Their “inability to control themselves.” What’s your endgame? Are we now in the business of “teaching them a lesson?” What if they cannot learn that lesson? Or cannot learn it in the way we want to teach it? What then? Fuck them? Let them stay in poverty and stupidity, raise their kids in poverty and stupidity, create all new generations of stupidity and poverty?
I’d do the same thing I’d do with anyone who consistently makes a bad decision. Get the hell away from them before they suck me into their madness.
But the piece isn’t an indictment against isolated individual or a single store. It’s exposing an societal problem. The bad decisions of a couple with questionable intelligence and the fall-out from unethical business practices both have a way of spreading out to the entire community. It’s in the community’s best interests to find a way to keep these things in check.
Let’s get something straight, this isn’t about the freedom of the poor to get ripped off. This is about the freedom to make a buck off of someone else’s misfortune. The question here is not about the freedom to make bad decisions, it’s about the existence of a particular efficient way of transferring money from the pockets of the poor (and our servicepeople) and putting it in the hands of a particular business owner.
The market serves the people, not the people the market, and in this country we’ve put some common sense limits on the market where it shows a net benefit for society. We do not allow price gouging in emergencies. We do not allow outrageous interest rates. We do not allow for monopolies. We do not allow misleading advertising. I would guess your average American is protected by law from a large number of predatory practices.
Some people have found a loophole, and due to people’s desperation, it happens to be a profitable. I think it makes sense to close the loophole. Not because I am a freedom hater or I want to make decisions for the poor, but because I want to live in a society where people get a fair deal for their buck. I spent two years in China, where it’s the wild west in terms of consumer goods, and I am damn happy that in the US I can generally expect to get what I am expecting when I make a purchase and I will be protected from scams and rip-offs. I believe this is a benefit to our country as a whole.
Good point, but once you close that loop hole and someone who is poor needs a loan to fix their car to go to work, but nobody lends them money, what is your solution?
We have many good laws that prevent people from to their own disadvantage. If we didn’t then only the most crafty and evil of us would prosper. When I mindlessly click “I agree” to the terms and conditions of the 58th update to adobe acrobat, I want to be able to be confident that I didn’t just sign away my kidney. When someone claims to be a Nigerian prince and takes away my grandma’s saving I want that person prosecuted even if it was her own fault that she fell for such an old scam. If I’m buying a house I want some redress if it turns out that it was build over a nuclear waste dump.
While the theory such lenders achieve optimality under the auspices of the free market, it is widely recognized that the theoretical benefits of a free market exchange assumes perfect knowledge by both parties. When one of the party has no idea what they are getting into, then those benefits disappear, and what you are left with is the strong preying on the weak.
Whether or not these practices should be made illegal, I stand by my original comment. If your business model is based on convincing people who don’t know any better to do things that are not in their best interest, than you are a shitty person running a shitty business.
They don’t need to run background checks. They know that only the poor and/or stupid will ever enter their shop because the others have zero reason to do so.
And they’re preying on those poor and/or uneducated. Squeezing every penny they can from those who have the less. You wonder how they can sleep at night.
More than the bolding is yours - you have added words to the quote, not merely bolded a few things - and your first addition is factually wrong.
Ramen is unhealthy indeed, but not because it contains “sugar.” It’s pretty hypocritical for you to criticize someone else’s food choices when you can’t even get that really basic fact right.
Except in this case, the only party who really understands what they’re getting into is the fucking furniture store.
As I said before, this woman is obviously an idiot who doesn’t understand what she’s getting into, and the proof is that she agreed to the fucking furniture store’s terms. Even if you explained to her what she was getting into, and she signed her name to a paper certifying that she understood what she was getting into, it’s obvious she doesn’t.
Someone once posted a link to a “ten reasons poor people stay poor” that I found very instructive, wrt impulse control.
It’s difficult to put oneself in the shoes of someone poor and without serious perspective to ever get out of poverty. I wouldn’t swear I would display much impulse control in this situation. I’ve been poor at times, but briefly, and never envisioned I would stay this way. I think this changes everything.
Coincidentally, I happen to really need a new sofa now, but due to temporary issues, I can’t afford one at the moment, and in fact, I’m sitting on the floor at this very instant, as suggested by a poster. But I don’t expect to stay sofa-less for long. If I expected to not have a sofa until my retirement and death, and to still be sitting on the floor at 70, maybe I’d be unreasonable too.
Not really the topic, though. The issue here is sharks who are preying on the weakest (whether this is due to character flaws or bad luck).
Anecdotes aren’t data, and besides, why do you want to punish children, and anybody else who is wrapped up in a household like this, with little say in the matter?
This is just like the reluctance to, for example, approach sexuality like the Dutch do. They have rock-bottom rates of abortion, STD’s, and unplanned pregnancies, which results in substantial savings, but they achieve this by beginning medically-accurate sex ed at age thirteen, and through a single-payer health system. They don’t approach sex (or drugs) as some fraught moral issue, but rather as just another matter of public health where results matter more than (religious) principles.
I’m honestly not sure what point you are trying to make with this.
I see that you made a choice of responsible aestheticism, while your friends bought nice things on credit, but I’m failing to see how outlawing usury would make this situation worse.
Is it that you happy that your friends ended up paying say $500 in interest payments on a cheap set of book cases, so that your superior responsibility was rewarded and your friends were properly punished for their hubris? While if the loans they got were illegal they would have been just as happy as you, which would be unfair?
Were your friends happy that they spent $500 on interest payments rather than having bricks and boards like you did and you regret your decision are worried that moderating the laws will make the poor suffer like you did?
With all that said, I do understand the temptation to scorn the stupid; I mean, I still really want to get revenge on everybody who ever laughed or giggled when I used big words in class.
That wouldn’t be enough. Our whole economy is based on spending–even spending money we don’t have–and thus a culture of consumption permeates our existence. This issue is much bigger than multiplying numbers, or making laws about business practices. Yes, having that sofa, as even sven notes, is really the only key to normalcy in this world. Everyone needs normalcy, even the poor, at any cost, and so the poor are often paying the higher cost.
It wouldn’t be the prospect of never having a couch that would drive me towards bad decisions. It would be the absence of all the other nice things in addition to not having a couch. No nice clothes. No nice car. No nice home. No nice anything. And I’d be reminded of this every time I turned on the TV.
I could do away with my couches right now and not suffer a bit because I’ve got plenty of other symbols of success and normalcy.
No kidding. My wife and I end up getting about half of our sons’ (6 mos and 3 yrs) clothes at local consignment sales and shops.
And I could easily afford to buy all the clothes brand new, but it’s just flat-out stupid, when young children outgrow them so rapidly, financially capable or not. Nobody ever said you need or deserve new stuff, and if you can’t afford it, it’s a flat-out poor choice to not go that route.
