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Burrito Now, Pay Later

enterprisevalue.substack.com

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Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#81

Post by bcoates »

zug_zug wrote: post #12

I think this would be more informative if it dropped all moral pretense and just talked about the economics objectively. If we’re gonna call a spade a spade, bnpl is one of a dozen services that extracts money from those whose judgment we doubt (like gambling, lottery, junk food?, drugs, overpriced status-symbol vehicles, or even “digital goods”).

But if you read the article, it doesn’t? bnpl makes its money off charging merchants a few points higher service fees than cards, which for a lot of merchants is worth it to close the deal.

(Unstated in the article is that richer people with better credit have regular access to no-interest/negative fee consumer loans on the order of 6-18 mos., so they have no reason to use BNPL)

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#82

Post by nine_k »

Retr0id wrote: post #57
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to discard the morals of a business to judge it "objectively?"

Because morality is inherently subjective

Game theory has an objection, your honor!

Some kinds of mores are more cooperative, and some are more destructive, and especially self-destructive. The good is usually associated with more cooperative and mutually supportive traits, and evil, with destructive. The good usually prevails in the long term because cooperation is more efficient than destruction.

So yes, there are objective correlates in good and evil traits, even though they are rather statistical than unequivocally causal.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#83

Post by me_me_me »

bcoates wrote: post #81
zug_zug wrote: post #12

I think this would be more informative if it dropped all moral pretense and just talked about the economics objectively. If we’re gonna call a spade a spade, bnpl is one of a dozen services that extracts money from those whose judgment we doubt (like gambling, lottery, junk food?, drugs, overpriced status-symbol vehicles, or even “digital goods”).

But if you read the article, it doesn’t? bnpl makes its money off charging merchants a few points higher service fees than cards, which for a lot of merchants is worth it to close the deal. (Unstated in the article is that richer people with better credit have regular access to no-interest/negative fee consumer loans on the order of 6-18 mos., so they have no reason to use BNPL)

[dead]

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#84

Post by thaumasiotes »

margalabargala wrote: post #53
tecleandor wrote: post #36

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…

> Viewed through the lens of a society that only paid up front in cash, what I do would be viewed as risky and irresponsible

Are you sure about that?

I would be surprised if a society that only paid up front in cash had ever existed. For example, "if you do something for me now, I'll do something for you later" is a much more basic form of interaction than "if you do something for me now, I'll give you this money" is.

Financing your meals isn't an exotic concept; it has normally been known as "running a tab". But running a tab involves periodic settlement of whatever the tab has run to. It isn't broken down into individual transactions each on their own detailed payment plan. This is something that doesn't make sense for small purchases.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#85

Post by whatever1 »

Let’s permanently destroy the credit scores of those in need and send AI collections their way and drive them to suicide. It’s good for the completion of the market.

Then act surprised when the elections turn out the way they turned.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#86

Post by losteric »

blagie wrote: post #50
scubbo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. It's been my experience that, for any innovation in financial technology, if you keep asking "and why is that beneficial?" for long enough, you will finally arrive (via tangents into "liquidity" and suchlike) at "it allows those with money to extract more money from those with less money".

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.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#87

Post by const_cast »

monero-xmr wrote: post #66
blagie wrote: 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

No you can definitely vote this stuff in, especially if you let capitalists extract money from vulnerable populations for long enough.

People have a misunderstand of protections or government spending. The New Deal isn't socialism, it's the perfect capitalist policy. If we never had the New Deal, there's a good chance we would be a socialist democracy today. We got really, really close.

When things get bad you have to throw people a bone in order to maintain the current systems. Our newest generations of the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful don't seem to understand that. Ultimately we, the working class, hold everything together. We're the majority and it's not even close.

If we wanted to change things for our own selfish benefit, we could.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#88

Post by claytonjy »

kweingar wrote: post #54

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…

That’s one of the arguments in the substack post. BNPL is like credit cards, but more specific, and that specificity allows for more accurate pricing of the loan risk.

Re: Burrito Now, Pay Later

#89

Post by djoldman »

pc86 wrote: post #71
Retr0id wrote: 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…

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

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