I'm often not a fan of regulation, but I wholeheartedly agree with you. It actually may be that deregulation could also work, as with many things we've found t

I'm often not a fan of regulation, but I wholeheartedly agree with you. It actually may be that deregulation could also work, as with many things we've found the worst of all worlds where there's just enough regulation to keep out any real competition and not enough to actually protect anyone other than a few lobbied interests. But deregulation would be a much riskier approach, whereas there is a pretty clear, minimally invasive path forward for regulation to solve a lot of these issues. In addition to the things you suggest, I also think more regulation around what kinds of recurring bills should and should not be considered debt, and stricter rules around things being sent to collections. Right now, if e.g. you have a $30 utility bill for a partial month of service on your previous residence, the provider can send it to collections without really making any reasonable effort contact you. There are also predatory recurring bills that can be incredibly difficult to cancel and that turn into debt if you forget about them. At a bare minimum, physical mail shouldn't be sufficient notification that an account is past due, creditors should have to make some kind of reasonable effort to contact you that is consistent with modern social mores. There are lots of rules that could be put in place to better protect consumers from accidentally having their credit ruined. I really don't believe that a young person being a little bit careless, or not understanding the intricacies of the credit system and what is at stake, has anything to do with whether they are capable of making payments on a major purchase like a home years later.