Transcendental Success

I love my credit card. It gives me discounts, it protects me from fraud, and it frees me from having to carry cash around. My credit card is like a flower-filled meadow on a sunny day, but that’s because I don’t use the credit part of the credit card. I pay it all off every single month so I use it as a convenience, not a source of money. However, the option to NOT pay off the balance is always lurking, at which point the double digit juice starts running and the bankers uncork the champagne.

I’ll put out a thought for you: Consumer Credit ought to be illegal!

There is simply no need for it, and no benefit either. Borrowing at very high rates to buy dinner, a stereo, a vacation, is uncalled for in society. The only benefit is that someone gets to immediately satisfy some desire they have without thinking or earning the money it costs. In their weakness they enslave themselves for some period in the future and increase the cost of whatever they are buying in a way that is inconspicuous. That stereo, which cost $500, might be paid for in $25 piece chunks as a little line on a bill over 3 years: costing $900!

Will anyone suffer from not getting the stereo? No! No harm will occur. None at all. If the purchaser wants the stereo he can always get it simply by earning and saving the money for it. The store doesn’t suffer because they’ll sell him the stereo next year or the year after when he has the money.

Who will suffer from buying the stereo? The purchaser, because of the enduring obligation he enters into and the increase in the cost of whatever he’s buying. And the one who gains from the purchaser’s suffering is the banker of course, who now has a slave producing a monthly income stream.

You can tell that the credit card companies really want you to run out and ruin your life. That would be ideal for them. They tempt you, like a drug dealer, with low rates, various cheap insurances, tiny 1% benefits (did you know they charge merchants more than 1% for processing a transaction?). Anything to get you to run up more than you can pay so they can get the shackles on.

That access to limitless spending power also has an effect on retailers. They’ve long known that they can generate desires to be satisfied on impulse, but now the objections of an empty wallet are gone. If the customer wants it, it can be had. So you go into stores and they just throw all kinds of garbage at you:

“Hey, this is half-off for today only; you better buy it!”
“Oh my gosh, there are only a couple of these left. Ya gots ta get one!”
“Here’s something you never knew you needed, but take it from me pal, you need it!”
“All your friends have one of these, you’re going to be a total loser if you don’t get one.”
“You need to make a statement by buying this colorful piece of garbage to decorate yourself or your phone or your car!”

Just cut that waste. My suggestion is that it should be legal to renege on credit card debt very easily thereby putting the onus on the lender to decide if it’s worth the risk.

Think of it this way: If a banks lends a person thousands of dollars for dinners and vacations, they should not be able to go after a person’s livelihood. After all, they provided only a night out on the town, which is disproportionate to the consequences of bankruptcy or access to credit related to something important like a mortgage or a business. Their recourse should simly be the removal of the right to use the credit card, plus they can take back whatever you bought with the card and try to hawk it.