This Guy Took Out a Gigantic Loan to Destroy the Financial System | Hacker News Reader

This Guy Took Out a Gigantic Loan to Destroy the Financial System

vice.com

19 pointsLightning17 comments

Wow, what a genius. Lending money from banks and not paying it back. I think nobody ever had this wicked master mind plan. What's his point again? That stealing is OK when you want to promote your crazy, utopian socialist world view?

Failing to repay a loan is not theft. Generally the loan contract will provide for what will happen if the money is repaid and what will happen if the money is not repaid, and it is entirely up to the borrower to determine which happens.

Not theft, but entering into a loan contract with no intention of paying it back may be fraud.

He may well have committed fraud in what he told the banks though.

However, assuming he didn't reveal his plan to avoid repayment, it is fraud.

"his latest project: the creation of a completely autonomous town"

In twenty years, his town will have an organized government that he won't like, and some of the people in the town will be giving "tasks" to others. And at that point he still won't understand that some people like the regularity and (perceived) safety that "the man" provides.

Can we not submit mobile links?

http://www.vice.com/read/spains-robin-hood-prefers

I don't see how borrowing (stealing?) 500K euro from many institutions is going to do anything other than get himself some publicity and then trial followed by jail time.

Capitalism has a lot of problems, but I don't see how anarchists offer better practical solutions. I lump libertarians (of which I once considered myself) into the same group.

> spent the rest on Crisi, a free newspaper

Apple computers are expensive.

It's funny how people who benefit from a capitalist system have the luxury of condemning it. Meanwhile many people in the world who are starving and homeless would trade places with this guy in a heartbeat.

$642k is considered gigantic now? That's not that much bigger than my mortgage...

borrowed €492,000 ($642,306) from 39 different financial entities

$25 million total

Edit: However, $25,000,000 isn't very much over all, especially when your goal is to "destroy the financial system". Especially when it's only $640K from each bank.

I parse that as €492,000 in total. Another source supports this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/19/spain

Fair enough. I guess the style in which that sentence was written leaves something to be desired. I'm going to have to agree with you guys on this one, especially since I imagine it would be rather difficult to get over $640K from 39 different financial institutions. Averaging $16K loans seems significantly more feasible.

Totalitarian nutcase.

What we need are very deep changes in human relationships—trust between people. The integral revolution isn't about changing the economic system, it's about changing everything, changing the human being. We’re talking about change in every aspect of life. [...] The big issue here is that the concept of political parties contradicts the concept of an assembly. The assembly is an open process run through consensus. The political party system, on the other hand, is based on confrontation.

> What we need […] trust between people.

The funny thing is that the bank trusted him by lending him money. He has taken advantage of this trust and betrayed the bank.

When I see "gigantic loan" to "destroy the financial system" I think "billions of dollars", not single-mortgage-sized loans.

Sigh. There is no 'them' there is only 'us'

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