[flagged]

"too high for my liking" is doing a lot of work there.

Some of these loans are outright predatory, with multi-thousand-percent interest rates. These aren't loans that people who have better options are taking, and moreover I think a lot of people really don't understand how horrible that can be. Call your congressperson to get more funding for math education, and then maybe we can argue we should get rid of usury laws.

I guess I feel like the term "consent" is weaponized; did people opt into these loans? Sure, I suppose in a sense, but these are extremely desperate people and it is hard to say that what they opted into is "consent" in the classic sense of the term. They only take these loans because they feel like they don't have other options, not because they were able to compare rates across different banks and choose the best, and upon accepting these loans they can very easily get into situations where paying off the debt is functionally impossible.

Not sure how I feel about selling organs so I won't touch that one.

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Terr_ 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> I guess I feel like the term "consent" is weaponized; did people opt into these loans?

That also leads into complex questions like "is it really consent if the alternative is X", or "can someone consent to chattel slavery", or "at what point is chemical addiction no longer consensual", etc.

_______________

> "I should not agree with your young [socialistic] friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract."

> "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered [Monsieur] Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract." He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate. Well, all those poor men are desperate; they all hang starving on spikes. If they must not bargain collectively, they cannot bargain at all. You are not supporting contract; you are opposing all contract; for yours cannot be a real contract at all."

-- The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond by GK Chesterton [https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421h.html]

	▲	tombert 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I hadn't heard that particular quote. I was thinking Squid Game :) I do pretty ok now, but in 2016, I was completely broke. I was unemployed for awhile, but even after becoming employed it felt like I couldn't catch up with my debt. Even though I know they're basically scams, and I know how to calculate compound interest, and I know math better than the average American, I still considered one of those scammy payday loan places, just because the high interest was "Tom in a few month from now"'s problem. Fortunately I didn't have to go that far, and things did pick up, and I feel lucky for that. I think about that situation a lot; it was a very humbling moment. I guess I hadn't fully realized beforehand that the right combination of circumstances can really make people who would otherwise know better make objectively bad decisions. Life is already pretty hard even when things are going fine. We don't need assholes weaponizing circumstances for when they aren't.

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trollbridge 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No they shouldn’t be.

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tt24 4 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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trollbridge 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I just don't think it would be a good thing for people to be selling off their organs in a commercial fashion.

	▲	tt24 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I understand, and I disagree with you, I think it would be a good thing.