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We could read 100 sob stories, or we could recognize that every single overdraft (other than errors and fraud, which do happen but are rare and these days invar

We could read 100 sob stories, or we could recognize that every single overdraft (other than errors and fraud, which do happen but are rare and these days invariably corrected) is voluntary. Yes, banks will make money any way that they can. Yes, they will happily take your last dollar, or even dollars you don't have and never will. No, they do not give one flying fucking rat's ass about you, your sister, or the homeless Vietnam War veteran who saves orphaned children on weekends and singlehandedly saved the world from nuclear annihilation last week. Twice. They don't care. Not one tiny bit. They're probably bastards. So why in the name of all that's sane and holy would you give them money by falling into the traps that they set for you? You choose to write checks you don't know for sure are good. You choose to use your debit card instead of cash. You choose to keep poor records of your own accounts. These are choices that you make, or not, despite 13+ years of free public education that includes all the basic skills necessary to avoid this problem. And then you complain that the bankers are making too much money charging you a fee that you agreed to as a direct result of a transaction that you deliberately initiated against your account. You. Not the bankers. If you can't or don't care to keep good records, you should use your checking account for only the bare minimum of transactions that you know for certain you can keep track of, only when you are absolutely sure you have enough in your account, and use cash for everything else. Basically, if it is at all possible to use cash for something, use cash. If you aren't sure of the terms on your account, get out your paperwork. If you lost it, call the bank and get them to send it to you again; they're required to do so. If you don't like the terms, find someone else; there are over 7,000 commercial banks in the United States. There are thousands of pages of banking law and regulations devoted to making sure that you are aware of these fees, limiting them, obligating banks to refund or cancel them in certain situations, and on and on. It's your choice to pay them. It's your choice to hand those bastards a bunch of money for lending you literally a few bucks for a few days. Yours. Not theirs. And they're not even grateful for it. You really oughtta cut those bastards off.

Karunamon 11y ago
And the best part is, you're being downvoted for this.. I dunno, apparently a lot of HN thinks that it's impossible to believe that banks are generally run by bastards while simultaneously believing that 99% of these instances are completely voluntary and completely avoidable? If you keep track of what you're spending your money on, it's not a problem you're gonna have to ever deal with - and I say this as someone that's played this game with Wells Fargo in the past. But apparently, advocating for people to be responsible for their own actions is a radical and terrible thing nowadays.
- outworlder 11y ago
  Sure. For well-educated, silicon valley types with a resident accountant. You're missing out on the part that says that the poor (which many times goes with lack of basic education) are hit the most by these fees. Not to mention that overdraft fees are a ridiculous concept to begin with.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I hope you're seriously not implying that it takes an accountant to know how you're spending your money. Every checking account you can walk into a bank and get provides you with a paper register...
- danharaj 11y ago
  It's probably because people usually grow out of the stage of political awareness where one imagines human beings to be atoms that aren't connected to one another. If you think that 'personal responsibility' or whatever allows you to judge someone as stupid, inferior, or deserving of misery, then you will have a bias that makes you see people as individuals cut off from all social and economic context because it gives you the most leverage to rationalize their misfortunes away. People are all connected and all economic relations are social relations. If you treat everyone without their social context, you're basically saying that every powerful individual or institution can make relations with them a minefield because all that matters is that it's their weaker counterparty's responsibility to avoid all the mines. After all, everyone 'consents' to a 'voluntary' exchange. How could 'voluntary' exchanges be bad??? Your worldview is just a very immature way to rationalize predatory institutions and hostile power structures. Actions cannot be judged as voluntary except in context. The context that people like you and the grandparent tend to take is, at best, one of the law or some insipid moral principles based off of a rancid individualism.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    You seem to know an awful lot about my worldview based on nothing more than a statement of the completely true fact that these wounds are almost entirely self-inflicted. "Minefield"? "Don't spend money you don't have available to spend, otherwise bad things will happen" is a principle that most people are taught as children. You seem to conflate the ideas of personal responsibility and the idea of deserving whatever gets thrown your way. We can talk about how crappy the idea of overdraft fees are all day long, but at the end of the day, it comes down to "doctor, it hurts when I do this", the response to which is "don't do that, then." The mechanism of the pain might be the result of a bad actor, but it's still your fault for inflicting it in the first place.
methodover 11y ago
I think there's an aspect of morality that you're missing. There comes a moment when taking advantage of someone's lack of foresight, lack of intelligence, and/or carelessness becomes immoral. I'm not sure where exactly that line lies, but I think I have a good staring place: If you've created a system that takes someone's money -- even when that transaction was done with the person's prior permission in some way -- and that person says "Woah, wait a minute, this isn't what I thought I signed up for," that's a hint that you might be on the wrong side of that line. If millions of people have that reaction, and legislators start making public inquiries into what you're up to, that's a REALLY good sign that you might be on the wrong side of the line.

Karunamon 11y ago

And the best part is, you're being downvoted for this.. I dunno, apparently a lot of HN thinks that it's impossible to believe that banks are generally run by bastards while simultaneously believing that 99% of these instances are completely voluntary and completely avoidable? If you keep track of what you're spending your money on, it's not a problem you're gonna have to ever deal with - and I say this as someone that's played this game with Wells Fargo in the past. But apparently, advocating for people to be responsible for their own actions is a radical and terrible thing nowadays.

outworlder 11y ago
Sure. For well-educated, silicon valley types with a resident accountant. You're missing out on the part that says that the poor (which many times goes with lack of basic education) are hit the most by these fees. Not to mention that overdraft fees are a ridiculous concept to begin with.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I hope you're seriously not implying that it takes an accountant to know how you're spending your money. Every checking account you can walk into a bank and get provides you with a paper register...
danharaj 11y ago
It's probably because people usually grow out of the stage of political awareness where one imagines human beings to be atoms that aren't connected to one another. If you think that 'personal responsibility' or whatever allows you to judge someone as stupid, inferior, or deserving of misery, then you will have a bias that makes you see people as individuals cut off from all social and economic context because it gives you the most leverage to rationalize their misfortunes away. People are all connected and all economic relations are social relations. If you treat everyone without their social context, you're basically saying that every powerful individual or institution can make relations with them a minefield because all that matters is that it's their weaker counterparty's responsibility to avoid all the mines. After all, everyone 'consents' to a 'voluntary' exchange. How could 'voluntary' exchanges be bad??? Your worldview is just a very immature way to rationalize predatory institutions and hostile power structures. Actions cannot be judged as voluntary except in context. The context that people like you and the grandparent tend to take is, at best, one of the law or some insipid moral principles based off of a rancid individualism.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  You seem to know an awful lot about my worldview based on nothing more than a statement of the completely true fact that these wounds are almost entirely self-inflicted. "Minefield"? "Don't spend money you don't have available to spend, otherwise bad things will happen" is a principle that most people are taught as children. You seem to conflate the ideas of personal responsibility and the idea of deserving whatever gets thrown your way. We can talk about how crappy the idea of overdraft fees are all day long, but at the end of the day, it comes down to "doctor, it hurts when I do this", the response to which is "don't do that, then." The mechanism of the pain might be the result of a bad actor, but it's still your fault for inflicting it in the first place.

methodover 11y ago

I think there's an aspect of morality that you're missing. There comes a moment when taking advantage of someone's lack of foresight, lack of intelligence, and/or carelessness becomes immoral. I'm not sure where exactly that line lies, but I think I have a good staring place: If you've created a system that takes someone's money -- even when that transaction was done with the person's prior permission in some way -- and that person says "Woah, wait a minute, this isn't what I thought I signed up for," that's a hint that you might be on the wrong side of that line. If millions of people have that reaction, and legislators start making public inquiries into what you're up to, that's a REALLY good sign that you might be on the wrong side of the line.