When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

Only if we're also collectively telling people not to take them in the first place. The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.

Its should be a multi step thing. - Tell people how bad student loans are and how they shouldn't take them if they don't have a plan to pay them back.

- Educate people on alternative, like trade schools, apprenticeships, etc. Stop glorifying bachelor degrees beyond what they are (that should and often happens even in countries where education is paid by the gov!)

- Then, yeah, start doing something to reduce debt burden on those who were affected before the previous two steps were in place.

Otherwise, if we keep pushing for school loans but then tell people not to pay them, or forgive them, it's basically free education (a good thing) without actually collectively agreeing on making education free (which is kind of sketchy)

I think what you don't understand is how math works.

Doesn't seem to match up with

"Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it"

I guess these people aren't struggling to afford a hut on a patch of dirt. I also guess you aren't condemning the majority of people you know as spendthrifts. So how are you reconciling the 2?

Emergency room: $5,000 ECG: $300 Radiology: $600 Laboratory: $750

And maybe you just went in with chest pain from asthma where they took some quick labs and an x-ray, sent you home after breathing treatment and no prescriptions for anything, and now you have a $7,000+ bill after spending 13 hours in the ER. Most of that time was spent sitting around staring at a wall.

The cost of home is largely the right to live in a certain location and have timely access to certain places. That's what everyone wants. No only walls but clean water, air, safety, culture, groceries, jobs, parks, entertainments, infrastructure, government protection, good schools, and so on. There are probably thousand little things that make the cost of a home, all of which are highly desirable everyone.

Second you don’t want to pay it to spend the money one what life essentials

Third no one made you borrow no one made you enroll, you had a lot of other options accepting responsibility for your choice is a good thing

Lastly whom would you like to pay for your pick of university and your pick of courses

The debt-owners can hire much more expensive lawyers than you can. The debt-owners have gotten you to sign a contract that says any disputes will be handled by an arbitration bureau, in person, in a state where the laws are most in their favor.

The debt-owners have the cops on their side.

What are you doing about this? Who do you vote for, who do you give money to? Both in terms of political or charitable donations and in terms of who your landlord's giving money to, what the entertainment corporations you patronize are giving money to, etc.

(Not just you: everyone who agrees with this. Including me. I know I'm sure not dropping everything to fight the creeping economic injustice that's burning the Earth alive and concentrating more and more money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.)

Or taxes, when they are being used to recklessly loan so much money.

What will happen is that some very unpleasant men will come by and take things from you until you have paid it off or are so miserable you will start paying again. These guys are essentially paid to take things from you, so it's not like they'll stop either.

"The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese."

>A tanda is formed between ten friends and family. Each member gives $100 USD every two weeks to the group's organizer. At the end of the month, one participant gets the "pot", $2000. This continues until each member has received the pot.[4]

>Tandas are formed for many reasons, but often because at least one member is in need of money to pay a debt right away, or an emergency arises. But they can also be formed with no pressing financial obligations.

>Among Mexicans, these forms of informal savings associations play an important role sustaining the livelihood of many people living in both Mexico and the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanda_(informal_loan_club)

Do you think they are wrong about the institutions they are talking about?

1. Community has always supported people in times of need, more so than government services.

2. The Internet had created distance amount community members

3. Use of the Internet for funds like this (or for Gofundme, etc.) is bringing that back, though with strangers

4. Shifting attitudes and values on whether this is acceptable

5. One Millennial is now setting aside funds for direct contributions. I would not be surprised if that trend continues.

6. Continued pressure on Millennials to make ends meet with access to new technology has been leading to this.

7. Disadvantaged groups and their economic struggles are becoming more visible, along with means for the community to help.

An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food.

Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."

For the Bachelorette, I would assume that most of the donaters were young women that have experienced being dumped - the focus being the "community" (or perhaps it would be better to say population) of young women. It's not just random strangers donating.

This reminds me strongly of this YouTube video where an adjunct professor who's popular in the Magic TCG community asks for money for support, and gets quite a lot of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/35pjuq/tolarian_c...