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by kelnos 2696 days ago
Not at all. Just because you have agency, it doesn't mean you'll wield it rationally, or even responsibly.

And so you get the central question: in what cases should you protect people from themselves? It's a hard question to answer. Given that financial education in the US is nearly nonexistent, I would personally err on the side of protections in the financial sphere. Does that mean that some legitimate cases get denied? Probably. Is that a worse outcome? I don't know the answer to that.
1 comments
towelr34dy 2696 days ago
So by protection, you mean the bill as it was, that would 'remove pay day lending'. Maybe we'll copy what we did with drugs.

Hmm... what guarantees mob option will stop existing? That's what's happened with drugs. Drugs are easily available.

Or are you suggesting creating another lender of last resort?

I'm sorry, I'm not sure your offering a solution. It seems what is offered is a blind restriction to satiate your own feelings of 'protecting others'. Like we've done with drugs. It doesn't work because it doesn't address the problem, just the symptom. It's arrogant and short sighted.

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kelnos 2689 days ago
I wasn't coming down for or against the bill as-is at all; merely on the assertion about agency the parent commenter made.

I suggest you calm your anger and finger pointing and avoid reading things that I did not write.

I too agree that the War on Drugs is a boondoggle and has caused more harm and created more criminals (legitimate and otherwise) than we'd have without it. But I think we can agree that having a lot of people (for example) suffering and dying from opioid abuse isn't great either. Rehabilitation programs are the obvious answer, not just jailing people.

Payday lending is a totally different beast. I'm not sure what a great solution might be. While it's physically safer to take a loan from a payday lender than from an illegal, shady, mob-run loan shark, payday lending can still be incredibly harmful. Outright banning probably isn't the answer, but allowing them to run as they have been isn't great either.

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