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Burrito Now, Pay Later

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Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#321

Post by markovs_gun »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #223
ChadNauseam wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. OTOH, the article literally says that "data [shows] that those with lower incomes, lower education, and worse credit (redundancies here) are more likely to use BNPL." Most consumer…

Plus being poor is essentially an IQ debuff. I remember I had a week where I had my identity stolen, had a large unexpected medical bill that I spent 20 hours on the phone with my insurance trying to figure out why I was getting said bill*, my grandma was sick, and I was having a tough time at work. If I were slightly less well off or didn't have a job where I could take a day off on short notice to sort all of this out( or as is often the case, both at the same time), that week could have started a cascade effect that would have outright ruined my life. I was so stressed out that week I was forgetting really basic things and doing things wrong, I wasn't sleeping, and all I wanted to eat was junk fast food because it was fast and easy and I didn't have to think about it.

The thing is, a lot of poor people live like that every day. I have some friends who are a single car problem away from being financially destitute because of the death spiral that can come from being poor- your car that you drive to work breaks down and you don't have the money to fix it. You lose your job because you can't get to work, and you can't get another job because you don't have transportation. Public transit is non existent in most of the US. You can get another car, but it's a junker at an insane interest rate and that's another expense you don't need. So yeah in that headspace I can understand feeling like financing a burrito could make sense. If you're already not thinking straight and you're tempted by a simple pleasure that feels like the one thing you can control in life and you know you're going to have the bank balance tomorrow, I can see it.

People wanting stuff like this doesn't mean it's rational to use or moral to offer. It's a symptom of a society that is fundamentally broken, that is designed to keep people on the razor's edge of their current economic status and in constant fear of losing what little they have.

*If you're curious how this happens, I take an expensive medication for a chronic illness and my insurance randomly changed how they pay for it without informing me before I got hit with a $2000 bill

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#322

Post by tptacek »

scubbo wrote: post #317
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what I think about BNPL products, but those "tangents into liquidity" basically eliminated most of the costs of trading. You can't negatively polarize me into thinking there's a social good to paying $50 to place a simple buy order; not having to do that is part of what "liquidity" means.

You can't positively polarize me into thinking there's a social good to placing a simple buy order. That's precisely my point.

Explain? If you don't think there's any good in the markets at all, how is the status quo ante of the 1990s, where everyone transacting paid a cut to corrupt middlemen, any better? It seems like it must obviously be worse.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#323

Post by scubbo »

tptacek wrote: post #322
scubbo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't positively polarize me into thinking there's a social good to placing a simple buy order. That's precisely my point.

Explain? If you don't think there's any good in the markets at all , how is the status quo ante of the 1990s, where everyone transacting paid a cut to corrupt middlemen, any better? It seems like it must obviously be worse.

It is true to say that "a bad thing with an extra bad thing is worse than just the original bad thing", yes. If there exists a market for imaginary trading cards whose value is loosely predicated on how well a company markets itself (rather than on how much value it actually creates in the world), then I agree that it's desirable for that market to exist with as few capitalist hoarders as possible. So, yes, the absence of "corrupt middlemen" is a good thing, and a market without them is better than a market with them.

But an even better outcome is for the whole damn edifice to cease to be.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#324

Post by blagie »

losteric wrote: post #86
blagie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that's quite true. I've seen cases where it allows those with money to extract money from those with a lot of money too. Take this situation: Business A and business B are both doing well and competing with each other in a duopoly. a) No credit: Each business needs to be in the black, and competition is sustainable. b) Credit: Whichever business borrows more money to spend on buying customers is more com…

For the same reason, I’d argue mortgages are a bad thing for consumers by creating this prisoners dilemma around debt.

It depends on the format of mortgages.

There are parts of the US where home ownership is bottlenecked by land prices, where this is absolutely the case.

And there are parts where it's bottlenecked by construction costs, where this is not the case.

"Are a bad thing" is also complex. I would agree they WERE a bad thing when introduced.

Today, there is a complex problem of how you unwind this phenomenon. If you invested your life savings plus $800k of debt into a $1M home, and it's worth $500k, you have a serious problem. Simply eliminating access to debt would cause all sorts of economic disruption for consumers, almost certainly outweighing the benefits in lower housing costs.

And the other piece of the puzzle are zoning and codes. 100 years ago, if you had a plot of land, you could cut the wood and build a log cabin. Today, construction is $$$$$$$ because of inspections, licenses, insurance, and a crew of bonded / licensed workers. A log cabin would be illegal and result in fines.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#325

Post by x-complexity »

gopher_space wrote: post #94
djoldman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quickly devolves into semantics as you pointed out. Do you mean that reasonably all people agree that murder, rape, pedophilia, etc. are bad? Aka if close to everyone thinks something, then that's an "objective" opinion? If so, that makes sense. However, the parent comment may mean to say that wrong and right are qualities that humans place on things/events/communications... and I think that makes sense. Physics…

> Physics/chemistry/math has nothing to say about vice and virtue. Leaded gasoline.

> > Physics/chemistry/math has nothing to say about vice and virtue.

> Leaded gasoline.

Again, as GP mentioned, there's a failure in linking how (Physics/chemistry/math) imposes morality on (leaded gasoline): Any moral opinions on this subject are within the broader context of how it affects humans (negatively).

Physics/chemistry/math, in isolation, do not impose morality.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#326

Post by calmbonsai »

dani__german wrote: post #292
calmbonsai wrote: post #113

"This logic doesn’t change just because the thing being financed is a burrito." Yes, it absolutely _does_ change. One might as well go all the way and start offering Oxygen or Water bonds. The immorality masking as morality here is insulting--not related, mortgage-backed CDOs during the financial crisis and "Pay Day" loans. There are many, many fundamental individual needs and items (economic "utility") that, while f…

BMI is an excellent metric for measuring your own body. Its fantastic. Its not perfect, but considering its two numbers, its amazingly useful and a super easy way to quantify how unhealthy you are. If you are not currently using Body fat percentage, and know what yours is at this exact instant, you should use BMI instead. Here's a perfectly correct general statement: Any effort spent telling average people to not use…

I disagree with its use personally. There are many, many people whose BMI is in the 'Level 1 obese' category, but they're carrying around extra muscle not fat. Muscle is anywhere from 12-18% denser than fat. Also, DEXA scans are incredibly cheap (~$50) these days.

I do agree with your general statement about its use.

There's no reason NOT to use it, generally, just recognize that it has severe limitations when applied to the individual. Notably, effects of training and exercise on health using BMI as any sort of baseline or incremental figure of merit.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#327

Post by calmbonsai »

trillic wrote: post #275
calmbonsai wrote: post #113

"This logic doesn’t change just because the thing being financed is a burrito." Yes, it absolutely _does_ change. One might as well go all the way and start offering Oxygen or Water bonds. The immorality masking as morality here is insulting--not related, mortgage-backed CDOs during the financial crisis and "Pay Day" loans. There are many, many fundamental individual needs and items (economic "utility") that, while f…

Water bonds have been a thing for centuries. https://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golde...

These are municipal water bonds not individual water bonds. I wholeheartedly agree for the use of finance for municipal infrastructure.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#328

Post by calmbonsai »

shermantanktop wrote: post #144
calmbonsai wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Just because you can price, trade, and provide liquidity for "a thing" doesn't mean "that thing" can, or should, be financialized.

But but but “complete market”! The deployment of Econ-degree lingo doesn’t help the case.

Yup. Different "rules" apply at different scales. Something, something quantum finance.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#329

Post by SR2Z »

lumost wrote: post #193
ChadNauseam wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Curiously, medieval societies struggled with “usury”. Effectively being a wage earner was a tough game as you might owe rent, have a bad month, or end up overly indebted. Most wage earners eventually became indentured servants or worse. This contrasts with peasants who had permanent land rights and owned everything they produced, and did not have a fixed rent. It’s not just that people don’t understand debt, it’s tha…

Where do you get the idea that peasants owned their land?

One of the defining traits of medieval Europe was that peasants were forced into serfdom and were granted the privilege to work the land.

More primitive societies banned usury because the concept of interest was seen as unfair. This held them back from investing or speculating on the future and kept them very poor.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#330

Post by RainyDayTmrw »

thfuran wrote: post #314
RainyDayTmrw wrote: post #153

A lot of financial schemes sound like they could be above-board on paper, but in practice degenerate out of control. Securitization is a classic here. It's not that securitization is inherently bad or wrong, but it creates a lot more surface area for incentive misalignment and outright abuse. Consider the United States subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. I'm actually willing to accept that broadening the borrower base…

>In particular, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, home equity was a very real way for middle-class Americans to accumulate family wealth I think that is fundamentally bad. If owning a house is a way to accumulate wealth, having shelter is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

Oh, I 100% agree that this was, and is, a bad system. But given the system that exists, all else being equal, I think it's better that access to the system was more widespread.
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