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Comment by loudin | Hacker News Reader

So, what would prevent me from going into a massive amount of debt, not repaying it, and asking everyone else to foot my bill?

This seems like OWS is saying, "Well, corporations got greedy and were bailed out. Now it's the people's time to do the same thing." Why is something, when supported by a corporation, immoral when the same thing, supported by "the people", is righteous?

This seems like it's just encouraging bad behavior all around. Debtors get some money, people in debt get a massive discount, and people who play by the rules are even more at a disadvantage.

We need to restore trust in the system by educating people and holding corporations accountable for fraud - not by undermining the loan system. This move by OWS sickens me.

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Why is something, when supported by a corporation, immoral when the same thing, supported by "the people", is righteous?

Because corporations are intrinsically evil, and people are by inherent nature righteous, obviously.

I'm being sarcastic, but I honestly believe some of 'em essentially feel that way.

There is a case to be made that a corporation is not inherently evil, but is inherently amoral. If it can maximize profits by being socially responsible, great. But if it fails to pursue a socially harmful action that would maximize profits, the leadership can be sued by the shareholders. (Obviously, this is not relevant to privately held corps.)

Division of labor is a beautiful thing, but the division of moral culpability, not so much.

Sure, but amoral is different from proactively evil. An amoral entity can act morally with the right incentives.

I don't think this problem exists or is big enough to worry about because the rolling jubilee approach only permits moral hazard once every 7 years due to credit scoring.

To be able to rack up significant debt, one much have great credit for several years in a row so that your line of credit can be expanded upon year after year. I reckon it takes 3-7 years to be able to get to a credit line of $30k because you choose to default. In that time, the creditor is likely to make a bunch of money on that assuming you maintain rolling debt because of interest in the interim. Only in the case where you keep upping your credit line, but don't use any of the money until you plan on sucking it dry to you maximize the take on a scheme like this. Even then you get at most $30k and then have to wait another 10-12 years to be able to try that scheme again.

You make it sound as if people who play by the rules can't have distressed debt. Is that what you mean?

It's called bankruptcy. 7 years of never being able to have credit.

Are you kidding? They hand out credit cards like candy to the recently bankrupt.

This was my experience (by proxy, my aunt went bankrupt and the day it was final, bought a new car and had tons of credit card offers). They do this because they know you can't go bankrupt again for quite a while, so you're on the hook the second time.

TBH that's the problem of the companies handing out the credit cards. Companies that do that are making a business decision. You and I need not worry about their business model because they have their own spreadsheets with assumptions of how many people will not pay.

I realize Halloween was only a week ago, but I seriously never see people handing out candy as often as they do credit cards.

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