Credit card debt collection

My sleep went from bad to utterly shittastic a few years ago and I ended up missing several items that went to debt collection. They were medical bills I would only be too happy to pay and it’s a very weird feeling. I haven’t carried any debt for decades at this point, not even car or house.

I am still scheming ways to pay the creditors by getting them to accept a check, but it’s hard after they’ve gone to collection.

She's probably saved us $5-10k, probably $50k for her extended family (about five nuclear families)

I suspect most people don’t even need them but use them for cash back and consumer protection.

For people who do need them, there’s nothing inherently wrong with buying something and spreading the cost or paying for it later in return for paying some interest. Most people who do that won’t get into any trouble.

There are a hundred legal but potentially dangerous things that should be banned before credit cards if you want to go down that route. Start with guns, processed food, alcohol and social media perhaps?

Why should the government be involved in tolerating or not tolerating this? Credit cards are perfectly legal, ie tolerated by the government, in most of Europe, too.

The real question is: why do customers and merchants tolerate credit cards?

> So Why ? Why sponsor a system that fuck up entire families and push vulnerable people to suicide by giving them a way to pay things they can not afford in the first place ?

Debt in general, and buying things on debt in particular, ain't unheard of in Europe either. Debt collection agencies with shady practices exist in European countries, too.

> Why tolerate an entire industry of debt management that put people to their knees and bring literally Zero value to the real economy?

Who says it brings zero value? Have a look at why customers and merchants tolerate this industry. It's more complicated than 'banks are evil, and customers and merchants are idiots'. (They might very well be, but for your explanation to work, European banks would need to be less evil, and European customers and merchants need to be less stupid.)

> In the 60s, indeed, holding a debt record to every card holder was probably the only way to get a non physical payment system to work in the first place.

I don't think that's the case. And even if it was, your explanation doesn't explain the popularity of revolving credit, instead of just paying off everything every month.

Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit#Germany and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocheque

Payment by 'Eurocheque' typically involved short term debt with the merchant as well, but I don't think it had the same 'bad' influence as credit cards had.

Similarly, I don't think checks in the US cause the same issues that you are bemoaning here as credit cards do. But checks also work on something that works exactly like (short term) debt.

> A cashless payment system does not need debt.

Debt might not strictly speaking be necessary. But it doesn't by itself seem to cause the problems you are complaining about.