[fredkbloggs]

Let's talk about the word "accidentally".

Suppose I drive to a bar, have three beers, and drive home. I don't bother to check my BAC; I just assume I'm below the legal limit and can drive safely. On the way, I accidentally run over a budding young Progressivist on the street, who then dies. When the sheriff shows up, he finds that my BAC is 0.09 -- just over the limit!

Surely, you will agree that any penalty I am assessed for this should be minimal. After all, I did not intend to kill anyone. I did not think I was drunk. Sure, I didn't bother to check, or to assume the worst and take a couple hours' break before driving. But it was an accident. I didn't know that I was over the limit. Maybe I hadn't even read the law, and didn't know what the limit was, or what the penalties would be for exceeding it. Obviously, any big, mean, nasty "justice" system that would impose a heavy penalty on me for this act is evil and unethical.

Right?

[Retra]

Except, in your analogy, you are being force-fed alcohol by your landlord, car insurance laws, gas stations, any children you have, public dress laws, ISP, electric company, phone company, and the biological need for food.

This puts your default BAC at somewhere between .06 and 0.085 at any given moment. Now if you go over 0.09, do you think maybe that might happen on accident?

[fredkbloggs]

Nonsense. Nothing obligates you to use your checking account for the vast majority of ordinary purchases. And for those that you generally cannot avoid (usually only the rent), nothing requires that you fail to record the amount you spent and track the amount remaining. If you aren't sure of your records or don't care to keep them, use cash for everything else.

People with far less education than today's Americans have been successfully balancing checkbooks for over a century. My great-grandfather was a dirt-poor coal miner with a fourth-grade education and he never had any trouble avoiding overdrafts. And yes, he had -- and used -- a checking account for most of his life. Ignorance and carelessness are just excuses; they do not absolve you of your responsibilities.

[Retra]

My money is in my checking account. That's where it is. I can't use money from somewhere else. I could put it on a card, but then I still have to pay the card at the end of the month, don't I?

In fact, I just recently over-drafted my rent. Do you know why? Because my phone company auto-charges to my account. All I had to do was forget what day this happened, and not coordinate the exact day that my landlord cashed the check. (PS: it was my landlord who charged the overdraft fee. I have a decent bank.)

You're taking too narrow of a view here -- this isn't about responsibilities. Of course I'm responsible for my over-drafts. But I should not be at risk for them in the first place. And that's what this is about: RISK. The severity of a problem multiplied by the probability it will occur. Overdraft fees do not minimize risk, and thus they are not rationally justifiable. They disproportionately transfer risk from the bank to the customers. (That is, for every unit of risk the bank saves for themselves using over-draft fees, they deliver more than one unit of risk to their customers.)

[yummyfajitas]

If your landlord's bounced check fee is larger than $35, you'd have been better off with overdraft protection.

Incidentally, there is a great way to reduce this risk; manually pay your bills. I don't have any automatic charges larger than $10. You chose higher risk for higher convenience. It's a little silly to claim that the choice you made is not rationally justifiable - how do we know you were irrational then rather than now?

[Retra]

I pay rent on a storage garage and the owners have a policy: either use automatic payments or pay $15 extra per month.

That kind of thing is not my choice. It's lose-lose. And if I could afford a bigger place, or had the money to move that stuff, I wouldn't be renting storage.

Anyway, it would be far more risky to try to move out. And then, if I end up with a shitty roommate who steals from me, you'd probably tell me that this is my fault too. That I should have used my infinite time to make perfect decisions at every step.

You pay extra to be poor. Whether you choose it or not. It is not worthwhile for you to believe otherwise just because you have some ideological preference.

[jrockway]

Did this hypothetical event take place in New York City? If so, the NYPD would probably throw a parade in your honor.

Even if you were a driving a commercial truck and ran over a kid walking to school while driving without a license, they still wouldn't press charges.

[fredkbloggs]

Since this thread isn't about police misconduct, let's assume not. If you insist, feel free to assume it was an older straight white male rumored to vote Republican bouncing around under my wheels.