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When creditors sell debt to collections they should be required to allow the debtor to buy their debt back at that price.

Of course they'll never actually do that. Usurers are unreceptive to any notion that you won't pay every last extortionate penny. They'd rather sell it to collections for 5 cents on the dollar than let you settle for 50 in a straightforward conversation.

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I think that'd be hard in practice since the article mentioned that they're sold in bulk. Sending offers to everyone in a package would be difficult.

But I wonder if it could be possible to crowd fund something like this, or have a non-profit that just buys cheap debts like this and forgives them all? Idk what that would cost, but it could help shrink the shady debt collector industry a little.

Forgiven debt counts as income. There's some messing you can do with it, like I think one of the latenite hosts did with some student debt.

The whole sold-in-bulk thing I could see being 'remedied' by having some sort of federal clearinghouse that each item of debt has to pass through. Though, that'd probably get fought tooth and nail so money-men can pull subprime-shenanigans.

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