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When it comes down to it, pretty much every service takes advantage of someone's need. Someone needs to borrow money? Sure, lending the money at an interest rat

When it comes down to it, pretty much every service takes advantage of someone's need. Someone needs to borrow money? Sure, lending the money at an interest rate takes advantage of them. But so does billing for emergency room services or, heck, charging for a bottle of water on a hot day. Get over yourself-- and good luck finding a job where you're not pandering to someone's needs and then exploiting it to make a living.

_bxg1 7y ago
But in those transactions both parties end up better-off than they were before. Predatory loans are more akin to gambling or heroine: they intentionally undermine a person's rational decision-making in order to leech value from them, without any reciprocity. This undermines capitalism itself, in a way.
maximente 7y ago
honest question: do you think $23B interest is just "making a living"? because if not, then you acknowledge there's an opportunity to charge a teeny bit less, and maybe not move in to an uber chic building, to completely maximize potential profit according to the altar of profit-seeking. hell, according to this whole "efficient allocation of resources" "hypothesis" we should have long ago arrived at a point where the only way for these poor, poor banks to make a nickel is to massively innovate on risk models, technology, etc. because there's so much money (=> competition) that hundreds of firms are competing by lowering interest rate and there's barely any revenue to be made to pay for things like employees and computers. so why aren't we there yet?
- xhkkffbf 7y ago
  It's a fair point, but this $28b is not for one person. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people working at Capital One. All of the profit is spread out amoungst them. (Not evenly, of course). Many of them are making a pretty average salary. So yes, for them it's just making a living.

_bxg1 7y ago

But in those transactions both parties end up better-off than they were before. Predatory loans are more akin to gambling or heroine: they intentionally undermine a person's rational decision-making in order to leech value from them, without any reciprocity. This undermines capitalism itself, in a way.

maximente 7y ago

honest question: do you think $23B interest is just "making a living"? because if not, then you acknowledge there's an opportunity to charge a teeny bit less, and maybe not move in to an uber chic building, to completely maximize potential profit according to the altar of profit-seeking. hell, according to this whole "efficient allocation of resources" "hypothesis" we should have long ago arrived at a point where the only way for these poor, poor banks to make a nickel is to massively innovate on risk models, technology, etc. because there's so much money (=> competition) that hundreds of firms are competing by lowering interest rate and there's barely any revenue to be made to pay for things like employees and computers. so why aren't we there yet?

xhkkffbf 7y ago
It's a fair point, but this $28b is not for one person. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people working at Capital One. All of the profit is spread out amoungst them. (Not evenly, of course). Many of them are making a pretty average salary. So yes, for them it's just making a living.