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Burrito Now, Pay Later

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121–130 of 364 posts

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#121
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take it even further, why does being in the minority matter at all? Curious what your motivation is for mentioning that aspect.

If you think that objectively spending money on leisure is bad, my claim is that you are in a minority with that thought process. My implication here is not that being in a minority changes whether something is objectively true or not (it doesn't!). But I will outright say that I do not believe this, and I think that most people do not believe this. Claiming to believe that leisure is bad objectively is, in my opinio…

Sorry to press, but I'm not sure if you answered my question. Why mention that you think most people do not believe it? In your latest comment, you didn't justify, but you did "outright say" it again. What value does bringing it up have?

Not trying to be combative, just thought it's an interesting point in this discussion of objectivity vs subjectivity.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#123

One reason is that someone’s or a company’s income doesn’t always align perfectly with when they want to buy things. When we're talking about financing the construction of a new downtown office tower, a new apartment complex, or the unexpected maintenance of your business's whole auto fleet, I can absolutely see the argument that credit is a mechanism of greasing the wheels of the economy and allowing things to happe…

Food is a basic human need, paying someone to make a burrito for you and then hand deliver it to your house is not. There is no shortage of food in america. In brazil, many people don’t eat meat because it’s too expensive, and get the vast majority of their calories from beans and rice. you can also do this in america, but almost no one does outside of college students because food is cheap enough relative to wages that people can generally afford to eat a wide variety of foods.

The bigger problem with BNPL, in my view, is that a lot of people are not able to understand the concept of credit. I knew people in my hometown who got a credit card, and their reaction to having a $3k credit limit was the exact same as if they had gotten $3k deposited into their bank account. I’m honestly not sure whether they understood that they didn’t just randomly get given $3k. I saw this happen multiple times. But it sounds very patronizing to say the “there’s a lot of poor people who don’t understand credit, so we need to prevent them from having access to any so they don’t get the chance to screw themselves”, so I understand why no one does.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#124
post #61

It blows my mind that people use these food delivery services at all. The prices are wild. You hear people complain about how hard it is to make ends meet these days, yet they waste their money on these kind of luxuries. At least before you could wave it off as “well people buying Uber eats and complaining about the economy are separate groups”, but the existence of loans specifically for this blows up that argument.

This is pretty standard. Poor people end up paying more for worse. Poor people buy poor quality which needs to be replaced more often. They go into debt and pay interest paying far more than the original price. They spend money on convienent options like fast food and food delivery because they have no time for other options. Or they are actually depressed and taking efforts to save money and be healthier just are not chosen.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unhinged. > Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not. Financing your lunch means you can't pay for your lunch. And then somebody comes to search profit in that. Yep, it's societal decay. Ah, but he draws the line at sports bets, he doesn't like that.

> > Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not. > Financing your lunch means you can't pay for your lunch. And then somebody comes to search profit in that. Yep, it's societal decay. Counterargument: almost always when I buy something, lunch or otherwise, I put it on a credit card, which I pay off always before the due date but essentially never on the same day I had the lunch. Viewed through…

> But the American credit card system, which is the same sort of thing mildly rearranged, is far less exploitative.

Than what? Have we actually checked what the level of fraud is by credit-card companies, or how they price various cards for various customers?

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#126
post #71
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because morality is inherently subjective

You state this as if it's a fact but I think most people would disagree. If morality is subjective, then that means there is nothing objectively wrong with murder, rape, pedophilia, chattel slavery, or any number of things that most civilized people would find abhorrent. I'm not even trying to make a religious argument about the source of some objective morality, I don't think it's necessary to solve that to answer t…

There isn't anything objectively wrong with those. You can still derive a functioning society from selfish principles. I don't want to live in a society where I can just get murdered, so I am fine with outlawing murder.

This is philosophically valid, but also has the advantage of being how moral systems are actually constructed in practice.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#127
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think we should have all rent-extracting industries nationalized. Land, like in China, should be available only under a 99-year lease (perhaps with a modest homestead exemption). The government should own radio airwaves, natural resources, and banking. This doesn't mean that it couldn't hire private contractors to do the work (e.g. bidding on oil extraction), but Chevron and Exxon shouldn't own the oil…

I am so so happy we live in a democracy. Because if your ilk managed to take power, it would only have been possible through violent authoritarian revolution

[flagged]

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#128

I keep hearing people express dismay that people are financing their lunch, sneakers, or concert tickets. But this has been the norm for a while, no? I can't remember the last time I didn't utilize credit at a restaurant or retail store. If you use credit cards, it doesn't make sense to reflexively admonish people for using BNPL for everyday purchases. To be sure, BNPL is in many ways a predatory innovation. But it i…

A lot of people use a credit card like a debit card with fraud protection. You can pay off the balance every month and still get a benefit. The UX of paying is so smooth. Maybe that's possible with BNPL too (learned a new acronym today) but I haven't heard of it. If there was a thing that worked like a credit card, but without the credit part, I'd probably be using that instead.

From what I've heard in passing, debit cards used to, but then some law made it regulatory or financially (again I've only heard in passing) hard for companies to keep offering that

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#129
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the easiest person to extract money from is someone with no other option. We are right back to feudalism.

Usury is outlawed in many religions for good reason. This is a known problem with a known solution, but our society is run by billionaires who can put substantial capital to convincing the proles otherwise. Simply bring up inflation is wrong and not necessary (outside of disaster, etc) and the US government should control its own monetary policy and not the fed. You’ll get downvoted and/or fed arguments from economis…

Deflation is objectively pro-usurer.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#130
post #116

>Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not. I'd have no problems with BNPL if wages kept up with necessities like housing, tuition, and healthcare, or if those services were provided to citizens for free in exchange for higher taxes. Or even if minimum wage would move, like, at all. What I think this is a better sign of is this: a very lopsided finance industry against workers and borrowers d…

>I hope they fuck up the implementation and end up losing money to hackers. That is quite ungrateful to money lenders. They could, like, not lend money to begin with.

Please, won't somebody think of the money lenders?
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