I don't disagree with much of what you're saying, but it's orthogonal to the claim that credit availability and its attendant worst cases is worse than lack of

I don't disagree with much of what you're saying, but it's orthogonal to the claim that credit availability and its attendant worst cases is worse than lack of credit availability. I'm not sure the evidence supports this: even well-known "horrible exploitation" like payday loans have significant evidence behind the fact that they're net beneficial to the communities they serve. It seems to me that this is one of those cases where people are conflating a larger problem (global poverty) with a system that incrementally helps the situation (access to credit), due simply to its adjacency. The outcome, in this case and others, is to advocate for making these people's lives _worse_ by removing access to credit. That is to say, I'm a stronger theoretical supporter than most of radical global redistribution, whether as recompense for colonialism or out of a duty to our fellow humans. But this is more or less a complete non sequitur when it comes to debt, since that responsibility, to the extent you agree with it, says nothing about whether access to credit is helping or harming these people (and all the evidence I'm aware of says that marginal credit extended to the developing world tends to help, though this is an oversimplification).