> This is because apartments at both of these levels quite accurately assume that you can’t afford a lawyer - while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth

> This is because apartments at both of these levels quite accurately assume that you can’t afford a lawyer - while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back; the apartment complex has no reason to give back thousands of dollars they can simply keep. This is a really key point and this behavior affects many many aspects of life. Money is liquid power. Power is the ability to get others to do what you want. Unfortunately, power imbalances between people form an unstable equilibrium. As soon as you have a tiny bit more power over someone, the first thing you can do is use it to force them to give you more. This is, I believe, the seed of almost all inequality in the world. One of the main accelerators of this imbalance is threat—applying power without spending it. If power worked exactly like money where to get you to do something I had to pay you, then there would be natural counter-balance towards equality. Any time someone had more power, the only useful thing they could do with it would to be spend it, which would lower their power and raise someone else's. Unfortunately, you can often get what you want without spending any power simply by making it clear to someone that you could force them if you wanted to. They will capitulate and do what you want while you don't actually have to put any real effort in and squander any power. In the example here, the apartment complex can afford a lawyer to argue about returning a security deposit and you can't. So you acquiesce to not getting your deposit back and they don't have to pay for a lawyer. They acquire a bit more power (cash) from you without having to spend anything to get it. It's a shitty part of how life works.