[JoeCoder_]

When a private company has a massive failure, customers have the freedom to go elsewhere and the company may go out of business.

When a government agency has a massive failure, we're of stuck with it, short of hoping politicians might do something about it.

[whafro]

That's sorta the point – in this case, I have no ability (as a consumer) to "go elsewhere." Aside from the two times I've placed freezes on my credit history, I have no relationship with Equifax, and have never consented in any way to what they collect and share about me.

This contrasts pretty heavily with, say, Facebook – where even though they collect and share plenty of information about me, I'm at least both consenting and continuing to feed them by using a service I presumably find worth the trade-off.

If you are the type of person who gets upset about this dynamic of Facebook, then Equifax should be completely next-level.

[rmdundon]

True, but at least third parties (where they check Equifax, etc.) have a choice. With government, no one has a choice.

I do agree that handling of data could be regulated to some sort, though. Much like how we have agencies, etc. for keeping tabs on companies that handle other things (hazardous materials, food, etc.)

[kerbalspacepro]

You do, too, have a choice with government: you leave. Unless you live in North Korea or a similarly dictatorial state, you have a choice to leave your country.

[dominotw]

> and have never consented in any way to what they collect and share about me.

Dont you consent to credit reporting when you sign up to get credit, though.

You can "choose" to not use Equifax by not getting credit from people who report to equifax.

[lghh]

> Dont you consent to credit reporting when you sign up to get credit, though.

No, I consent to allow creditors to do their due diligence to see if I'm a viable candidate for their product. Equifax is not required in this transaction, it's just beneficial for the creditor, their customer, to use them to streamline that information collecting process. Loans and credit existed prior to credit reporting agencies and will exist long after.

[dominotw]

> No, I consent to allow creditors to do their due diligence to see if I'm a viable candidate for their product.

you do much more than that though , from my card agreement

"We may obtain and review your credit history from credit reporting agencies and others. We may, from time to time, obtain employment and income data from third parties to assist us in the ongoing administration of your account. We may also provide information about you and your account to credit reporting agencies and others. We may provide information to credit reporting agencies about this account in the name of an authorized user. If you think we provided incorrect information, write to us and we will investigate."

> Equifax is not required in this transaction

Thats upto the business to decide, not you. You choose to not get credit from them if you have objections to how they run their business.

[lghh]

>Thats upto the business to decide, not you. You choose to not get credit from them if you have objections to how they run their business.

Regardless of what the business decides, no, Equifax is not required to assess my credit. If the business decides to go to McDonald's to get lunch while they are doing this process, that's not required regardless of what the business decides. It may be nice for them, it may make their process easier, but it's not /required/.

[dominotw]

i agree that its not required.

[obmelvin]

That is not a pragmatic solution. An American adult pretty invariably has to interact with the credit system as part of life.

[dominotw]

Yea i guess the pressure should be on the lenders who use equifax not directly on equifax.

[danvasquez29]

most of the language in those agreements just says "major bureaus" though, not explicitly which. And major transactions will usually pull all three. Trying to pick only lenders which don't use Equifax (or another bureau) may not even be possible for something like a car or home loan.

[tclancy]

How would that possibly work? There are (I think) 3 brokers and creditors tend to share info back to all of them.

[vec]

This is true, but it omits the extremely relevant third case.

When a private company has a massive failure that impacts someone other than its customers, then the impacted parties have no recourse whatsoever.

You're not an Equifax customer. Banks and big businesses are, and they don't really have a strong incentive to punish this sort of behavior.

[Spivak]

> When a private company has a massive failure that impacts someone other than its customers, then the impacted parties have no recourse whatsoever.

IANAL. This is absolutely not true. You don't have to have a direct relationship with the other party in a negligence case. An easy example would be that you can sue the manufacturer of your transmission even though your Civic was sold to you by Honda. Equifax would have to somehow argue that they owe no duty of care to the people with private information in their database which just isn't going to happen.

[vec]

Yes, technically this can be addressed by a class action suit. Which is better than nothing, I guess.

This has always struck me as an odd anti-regulatory argument, though. "Governments shouldn't use their power to distort the market. Therefore regulations are inherently bad. Instead we should distort the market using a different branch of the government, but in a much more capricious and unpredictable manner."

[dredmorbius]

Standing and damages must be shown.

[lukejduncan]

The authors point is still valid with that argument though -- the people with the greatest risk from participation with credit bureaus aren't their customers and don't have a right to decline participation. It's a lopsided marketplace where the market incentives aren't aligned with the risk.

[beager]

Your second premise assumes that citizens are powerless to effect change, which is sadly more true these days, but in a proper functioning republic, government agencies are accountable and fixable.

[Applejinx]

In a proper functioning free market, companies are replaceable and reasonably transparent, so people can arrive at decisions and 'vote' with their actions in a practical sense.

I think the key point here isn't the system, but 'proper functioning'. In the event that no system is ever properly functioning, what's causing the least damage?

I'm reminded of the many stories I've seen claiming that people given experience of both, preferred 'bread line' communism to free market capitalism.

These people were never the lottery winners of capitalism: they're always just worker bee types, and their observation was that communism sucked but was stable and consistent. Small dreams, small risks, reasonable safety for the worker bees.

When they experienced capitalism, they had no preparation to competitively attack their fellow workers and win, and as a result they didn't win, they became worker bees under capitalism, and dropped below their previous living standard. Granted, this provided an environment where more ambitious worker bees could prevail and get rich, and that's the system working as intended, but for the less motivated ones, their experience told 'em communism took better care of them… in spite of the litany of horror stories we've all heard over and over (I live in the USA, so I've been indoctrinated against communism all my adult life).

I think it's pretty important to examine how these systems work when they're NOT properly functioning. It seems like free market capitalism produces some pretty spectacular damage when it catastrophically fails, but it's more abstracted. When something like communism catastrophically fails, it's in the form of state genocide, with more intentionality.

[beager]

It sounds like the abstraction of capitalistic damage is a feature

[SketchySeaBeast]

Sadly, being the commodity and not the customer, even though it directly affects our lives, and in spite of it being a private company, we can't do anything about it. And is the hope then that Equifax will go out of business? Are we under the assumption that either of the other two are better, or are they just the same, and they haven't had their day in the spotlight yet?

[dmode]

Did you even read the article ? The whole point is that as a consumer you have no choice to go elsewhere. Equifax has data about you that you never know and never consented to. They also sell their data to all sorts of agencies and their business practices are real shady. If you need to check your credit report multiple times in a year, they will sign you up for some useless monitoring program, and will make life really difficult to cancel it. At the very least, credit bureaus, who have enormous power over individual lives, without their knowledge, need to be made accountable and their profit motives squashed.

[0xfeba]

None of those apply to the CRAs. We aren't their customers, yet all of our data is held by them.