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The ability to verify trust and impose consequences on those who abuse it is imperative to society; Or, at the very least, societies where the repeated prisoner

The ability to verify trust and impose consequences on those who abuse it is imperative to society; Or, at the very least, societies where the repeated prisoner's dilemma has any bearing, which I'll argue ours is. The fact that we are willing to go to great lengths and invasions of privacy to do that is a tradeoff that we often make poorly, but is nonetheless a tradeoff we have to make for continued stability.

arca_vorago 11y ago
Bullshit. You are speaking in abstract terms and then seguing into the subject matter at hand as if it actually applies. Did you actually read the article? Even at their inception the "credit agencies" were full of inaccuracies, gossip, and otherwise unreliable information with little to no foundation. Let's extrapolate to their current form, to the complete and utter racket that FICO scores and the big three are. The algorithms are secret, there are some regulations on what they are supposed to use, but those who have taken the time to hack[1] the credit system have found they use them anyway. The entire credit/debt based system is a racket, a mere section of the myriad of tools in the ongoing class warfare that the rich are winning. It's a tool of social and financial repression, not one of imagined "stability" or "necessity". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU Addendum: If anyone or anything needs to "verify trust and impose consequences on those who abuse it", it's the people who need to do it against the oligarchy. What you are positing is basically the other way around.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  You have to look at these things in terms of the alternatives. You're welcome to not participate in the credit system, I didn't for some 8-9 years in my twenties. I simply didn't get any loans, credit cards, nothing that required a credit check. Now I'm happy to have access to credit because it makes my life easier and opens doors for me. Once I was ready to start, I found all of my old debts and things had fallen off my report. The agencies knew nothing about me. It took about a year with a Capital One card to rebuild, now I have three cards and a new car, for a while I was shopping for a condo. (ultimately decided against it) You can't have these things without a consumer credit industry, nobody's going to entrust financial instruments like mortgages and credit cards to random blokes coming in off the street. The alternative isn't a world in which credit reporting doesn't exist, the alternative is a world in which none of the things credit reporting gives you access to exist either. You can live in that world today. Stop paying your bills, let your credit cards go to collections, ignore the phone calls until you can change your number and move away. That's exactly what I did when I was 21. My only regret really is that I didn't run up bigger credit card balances or buy a nicer car. Credit reporting exists because lots of people are like I was when I was 21.
  - showerst 11y ago
    I'm not sure how old you are, but nowadays many (most?) employers will do a credit check along with your routine background check. Dropping out of the system might deny you a job at any large company, which greatly increase the costs of doing so.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      Never said there weren't costs to it. You're essentially opting out of a middle class lifestyle. That didn't bother me 10 years ago. Now I want those things, and I'm finding that consumer credit is practically the only way to get them on a reasonable time frame. They simply cost too much to save up for. Consumer credit is the parent that loves you no matter what and will always take you back no matter what you say to them or how badly you fuck up. Being a market industry, naturally that love is predicated on them making money off of you, but still, it adds to modern life more than it takes away. And I find it a mark of maturity to recognize that fact.
      - galdosdi 11y ago
        Well, it's not _things_, plural, that consumer credit is required to obtain. Just one thing singular, since really the only thing you _need_ consumer credit for is home ownership. (Pretty much anything else, you can save up for and/or get a cheaper yet comparable used/etc option simply by being shrewd. It just doesn't make a lot of financial sense to use credit for a car, furniture, etc, when you can get them affordably by just not being dumb enough to want brand new crap) But that one thing, home ownership, is totally a biggie. I rent, and it sucks to have to worry every June about whether this is going to be the year we have to move because the landlord doesn't feel like renewing our lease this time
    - eru 11y ago
      How do they hire foreigners, then?
    - marincounty 11y ago
      A required credit check for employment is illegal in California. California gets some things right.
analyst74 11y ago
After living in both China and Canada for extended period of time, I've always wondered why China's society has such low trust compared to Canada's, and came up with a few possible contributing factors. One of them, I believe, is the lack of history-tracking entities like credit bureaus, meaning that people who abuse trust are not remembered. Lack of a proper justice system is another major contributor, meaning that people who abused trust can get away more easily. Take a few concrete examples, when buying a used car in Canada, you can check vehicle history, which will bring up any major damages to the car (except in some exceptionally elaborate scandal cases); when renting to a tenant, you check his/her credit history; after a car accident, you only have to exchange insurance information; if you ate something bad in a restaurant or a food truck, you report it to the health services and they'll get inspected, potentially closing it down costing the owner dearly. In China, those things are either non-existent or not very well run, making private commerce a risky venture, heck, even eating out is a risky adventure.

arca_vorago 11y ago

Bullshit. You are speaking in abstract terms and then seguing into the subject matter at hand as if it actually applies. Did you actually read the article? Even at their inception the "credit agencies" were full of inaccuracies, gossip, and otherwise unreliable information with little to no foundation. Let's extrapolate to their current form, to the complete and utter racket that FICO scores and the big three are. The algorithms are secret, there are some regulations on what they are supposed to use, but those who have taken the time to hack[1] the credit system have found they use them anyway. The entire credit/debt based system is a racket, a mere section of the myriad of tools in the ongoing class warfare that the rich are winning. It's a tool of social and financial repression, not one of imagined "stability" or "necessity". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFDnQGr6WU Addendum: If anyone or anything needs to "verify trust and impose consequences on those who abuse it", it's the people who need to do it against the oligarchy. What you are positing is basically the other way around.

vinceguidry 11y ago
You have to look at these things in terms of the alternatives. You're welcome to not participate in the credit system, I didn't for some 8-9 years in my twenties. I simply didn't get any loans, credit cards, nothing that required a credit check. Now I'm happy to have access to credit because it makes my life easier and opens doors for me. Once I was ready to start, I found all of my old debts and things had fallen off my report. The agencies knew nothing about me. It took about a year with a Capital One card to rebuild, now I have three cards and a new car, for a while I was shopping for a condo. (ultimately decided against it) You can't have these things without a consumer credit industry, nobody's going to entrust financial instruments like mortgages and credit cards to random blokes coming in off the street. The alternative isn't a world in which credit reporting doesn't exist, the alternative is a world in which none of the things credit reporting gives you access to exist either. You can live in that world today. Stop paying your bills, let your credit cards go to collections, ignore the phone calls until you can change your number and move away. That's exactly what I did when I was 21. My only regret really is that I didn't run up bigger credit card balances or buy a nicer car. Credit reporting exists because lots of people are like I was when I was 21.
- showerst 11y ago
  I'm not sure how old you are, but nowadays many (most?) employers will do a credit check along with your routine background check. Dropping out of the system might deny you a job at any large company, which greatly increase the costs of doing so.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Never said there weren't costs to it. You're essentially opting out of a middle class lifestyle. That didn't bother me 10 years ago. Now I want those things, and I'm finding that consumer credit is practically the only way to get them on a reasonable time frame. They simply cost too much to save up for. Consumer credit is the parent that loves you no matter what and will always take you back no matter what you say to them or how badly you fuck up. Being a market industry, naturally that love is predicated on them making money off of you, but still, it adds to modern life more than it takes away. And I find it a mark of maturity to recognize that fact.
    - galdosdi 11y ago
      Well, it's not _things_, plural, that consumer credit is required to obtain. Just one thing singular, since really the only thing you _need_ consumer credit for is home ownership. (Pretty much anything else, you can save up for and/or get a cheaper yet comparable used/etc option simply by being shrewd. It just doesn't make a lot of financial sense to use credit for a car, furniture, etc, when you can get them affordably by just not being dumb enough to want brand new crap) But that one thing, home ownership, is totally a biggie. I rent, and it sucks to have to worry every June about whether this is going to be the year we have to move because the landlord doesn't feel like renewing our lease this time
  - eru 11y ago
    How do they hire foreigners, then?
  - marincounty 11y ago
    A required credit check for employment is illegal in California. California gets some things right.

analyst74 11y ago

After living in both China and Canada for extended period of time, I've always wondered why China's society has such low trust compared to Canada's, and came up with a few possible contributing factors. One of them, I believe, is the lack of history-tracking entities like credit bureaus, meaning that people who abuse trust are not remembered. Lack of a proper justice system is another major contributor, meaning that people who abused trust can get away more easily. Take a few concrete examples, when buying a used car in Canada, you can check vehicle history, which will bring up any major damages to the car (except in some exceptionally elaborate scandal cases); when renting to a tenant, you check his/her credit history; after a car accident, you only have to exchange insurance information; if you ate something bad in a restaurant or a food truck, you report it to the health services and they'll get inspected, potentially closing it down costing the owner dearly. In China, those things are either non-existent or not very well run, making private commerce a risky venture, heck, even eating out is a risky adventure.