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Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

> But using them to pay for utilities or rent seems like a colossally bad idea.

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As the article mentions, these are probably people who don't have the money in their bank accounts to pay for those things straight away.

Frakk, even at a sane repayment terms (e.g. fixed interest monthly, no steep penalties), it's an interesting way for finance companies to profit from the misery of the leg of the K in the K-shaped economy.

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literally anything that's better than paycheck advance ursery is a win.

You can use the same to argue for "paycheck advance ursery", because the alternative to that is borrowing from the mob, or not borrowing anything at all and being thrown on the streets.

Another alternative could be implementing reasonable and toothy checks on corporate malfeasance like price fixing, rent-seeking, wage theft, and wage suppression such that the lower class can actually afford to live in society.

I see no path for how this could/would happen that doesn't wind up with BigCo saying "our obvious evil is complaint because lawyers and engineers and experts we paid off say X Y Z" and any medium or small business that could ever threaten them gets screwed status quo that we currently see with every other area of compliance.

But is that really an alternative? Same resources, same effort to implement?

I’m all for major reform, but I am suspicious of “instead of the small fix, do the big fix”.

The best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago. The next best time is today.

To that point, we planted that tree a hundred years ago. Someone cut it down 50 years ago because they didn’t understand why it was there - so yes, the best time to plant the tree was 50 years ago, we should plant it today, and also let’s maybe take the axes out of the hands of the idiots who cut our tree down the first time, too.

You mean implement checks on the foundations of the American economy in the 21st century?

The next best option is something like begging your friend/relative for the money they were gonna use for rent. None of the options in these situations are good.

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