[amelius]

Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is.

But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.

[manquer]

UK government is just taking their cut, they aren't returning the money to anyone.

So what difference does it make to the regular joe that the loan shark got shook down by the mafia boss ?

[amelius]

The difference is that the shark is now disincentivized to do it again.