> If he had money to buy an airline ticket, they told the South China Morning Post, he should use it to repay what he owed. This line of thinking spans culture

> If he had money to buy an airline ticket, they told the South China Morning Post, he should use it to repay what he owed. This line of thinking spans cultures and completely ignores the velocity or time value of money. It is extremely counterproductive and doesn't factor in what someone is trying to do. This punitive approach to all forms of spending and consumption hampers the productivity of nations. A simplistic analysis like this has no way to distinguish someone shirking their debts, and someone reinvesting in a future business prospect, or just unwinding! All humans want to unwind. People with lower debt ratios do the same thing. They don't always pay things down, don't always prioritize debts in any particular order. So this privilege shouldn't disappear just because someone is visibly having money challenges or merely known to have a creditor.