Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

pewtrusts.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 182 posts

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#171

Post by barry-cotter »

mannanj wrote: post #169
1-more wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm begging on hands and knees for everyone in this thread to read Graeber's "Debt: the first 5,000 years." The notion that debts have to be paid is very odd. If I went to a bank and asked for a loan to bet on a horse, they'd laugh me out of the building. But if they knew that no matter what they could get the money back from me, they'd cut the check. That's where we are right now with non-dischargeable debts. Who ho…

Would you recommend against the newest addition: Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Year or the 2012 release?

Don’t read it. Save your brain for a book that isn’t riddled with so many errors Brad DeLong wrote ten articles on the errors in Chapter 11.

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/07/hummel_on_graeb.htm...

> I have read David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years thoroughly and despite Graeber’s readability, scholarship, and erudition, it is a very bad book. Its tone is much too polemical. More important, when it gets to the more recent history that I know well, it is riddled with errors and distortions. Beyond that, it suffers from serious conceptual confusions, and in his excellent critique, Robert Murphy has only scratched the surface.

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2012/02/gabriel-rosser-on-da...

>> How the poor debtors still sell their daughters, How in the drought men still grow fat « Code and Culture: At Unfogged there’s a review (and a very funny comments thread) pointing out that the following sentence contains six factual claims all of which are incorrect:

> Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages

The above is a quote from Debt about Apple.

Here is the index of posts about errors in Chapter 11.

https://www.bradford-delong.com/.services/blog/6a00e551f0800...

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#172

Post by FourthProtocol »

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. Taking someone to court for not paying a debt and then (if severe enough) sending them to prison ends up costing the state, and tax payer, a lot more than just writing off the debt. It's a vicious circle where (on average) only the debt collector wins. It's one of many scenarios (another being healthcare) that point towards a social (not communist) solution being the only way. Civil War usually starts when a significant portion of a population can no longer feed itself...

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#173

Post by bergstromm466 »

refurb wrote: post #139
bergstromm466 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dream on. "This is the age of rentier capitalism; rich countries are becoming rentier economies. A rising share of global income is going to rent, rather than to wages or profits from productive activities. This perpetuates inequalities: It disproportionately favors the wealthy, and accentuates inequality over generations. Through the spread of trademarks, trade secrets, copyright and, above all, patents, intellectua…

Your source says nothing about who pays the most taxes. So let me google that for you: "the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of all income taxes". https://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-how-y...

> So let me google that for you

No, thank you. I'm sorry people were crap to you, and now you act like a trickster/know-it-all/joker.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#174

Post by bergstromm466 »

mythrwy wrote: post #146
refurb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your source says nothing about who pays the most taxes. So let me google that for you: "the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of all income taxes". https://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-how-y...

To sum up both of your statements, the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of all income taxes, but an increasing percentage of the taxed income is derived from rents (which originate from the labor of the renter class).

> an increasing percentage of the taxed income is derived from rents

Yes, thank you for making the link clearer.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#175

Post by Sacho »

pests wrote: post #135
6510 wrote: post #134

What a depressing topic. Since one is responsible for his own debt and just forgiving it is unfair to those pulling their own weight perhaps the small amounts the article talks about should play part in setting the height of an initial basic income. If the income is guaranteed it can at least pay the interest over debt. It could become more interesting to get payments rather than sell peoples property and ruin their…

How is it unfair to forgive debt? What? Other people don't affect you.

Um, they literally do? In aggregate, it's a similar effect as a VC-backed company burning capital to push out competitors. You're spending money you don't have, which drives the economy, raising demand and prices. The people who don't do the same can now afford less. Then the balloon pops, and your debt is forgiven, while you've reaped all the benefits from having the extra capital that your peers didn't.

Even in a simple terms, it hurts people's sense ethical and societal obligations. Why should I deprive myself of consumption and be a responsible economic participant, when I can spend money I don't have and then have my debt forgiven?

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#176

Post by imtringued »

llsf wrote: post #61

Seems like there are some money left on the table. Should someone build a small company to defend all those people solely based on some contingency fee (well a tiny percentage of what they owe or would pay if they lose). If I owe $5,000, a lawyer takes the case, and prevent me to pay the $5,000 for a $500 fee, and I never hear again about the debt collector, that seems a win-win. Those debt collector would start to t…

You seem to misunderstand something. Debt collectors aren't winning cases of illegitimate debt. They are winning legitimate court cases that the defendant simply ignored. Even if you bring a lawyer to court that doesn't mean that you won't have to pay the debt. That $5000 debt was probably bought for less than $500 by the debt collector and the debt collector is willing to settle for something like $1000 which is still significantly less than the original debt.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#177

Post by LatteLazy »

I actually think the current system works well. The only people having a bad time are people who borrow AND don't repay AND refuse to work with their lender AND refuse to come to court.

And remember, there is no free lunch here. Making life easier for borrowers who can pay but won't just means the rest of us have to pay more for out legitimate borrowing.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#178

Post by DanBC »

imtringued wrote: post #176
llsf wrote: post #61

Seems like there are some money left on the table. Should someone build a small company to defend all those people solely based on some contingency fee (well a tiny percentage of what they owe or would pay if they lose). If I owe $5,000, a lawyer takes the case, and prevent me to pay the $5,000 for a $500 fee, and I never hear again about the debt collector, that seems a win-win. Those debt collector would start to t…

You seem to misunderstand something. Debt collectors aren't winning cases of illegitimate debt. They are winning legitimate court cases that the defendant simply ignored. Even if you bring a lawyer to court that doesn't mean that you won't have to pay the debt. That $5000 debt was probably bought for less than $500 by the debt collector and the debt collector is willing to settle for something like $1000 which is sti…

If people don't know about the debt and it goes to court and a default judgment is issued, well, we don't know if the original debt is real or not because it didn't get tested in the court.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#179

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #168
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't agree that you ought to be able to legally go after anyone for more than the principal on things like "consumer" debt.

They generally settle for way less than the principle, credit card debt for one is sold for cents on the dollar (4 to 7 according to this source, though I've heard lower). [1] I really dislike how when debt collection gets talked about, the debt collectors are the evil ones. Never mind the person who signed a contract to pay x interest in return for y money and didn't pay it back. [1] https://www.bankrate.com/persona…

>I really dislike how when debt collection gets talked about, the debt collectors are the evil ones. Never mind the person who signed a contract to pay x interest in return for y money and didn't pay it back.

Those are usually pretty predatory contracts. Consumer credit isn't like my mortgage, where someone reviewed my past five or more years of finances and decided my income and assets actually justified the loan. Hell, my mortgage has a much lower interest rate than most consumer credit (eg: car loans, credit cards, etc.).

Those high interest rates are rationalized as reflecting the risk of default on the debt. Ok. So if someone is going to default, you charge the next sucker more interest, because I don't see why you should be made whole off garnishing someone's paycheck when you choose to make predatory loans to risky borrowers.

De facto, the whole thing is just privatized taxation with extra steps: the "borrower" pays a monthly tax to the "creditor" for the privilege of existing while poor, and in exchange, they are kept, deliberately, in perpetual debt.

The only loans that the government should help you collect on are those designed to be paid off in full in the first place.

Re: Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts

#180

Post by darkwizard42 »

adrianN wrote: post #19
linuxftw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there good money in it? There's actually a good startup opportunity here. Many of these debt collectors are unethical. You could buy these bad debts for pennies on the dollar, settle them for a very modest margin, and help the poor people fix their credit without filing for bankruptcy.

It seems like that strategy is difficult in an efficient market of unethical debt collectors, as intuitively they would be able collect a larger fraction of the debts than the friendly debt collector.

I think this is the hardest part. You would have to pay the same price for the debt as the unethical collectors and then make less off of it than the unethical ones probably putting you in the red :/
Post reply on HN