100% agreed, and to some extent people _do_ need to be protected from themselves where irrational decisions are likely. But the comment I responded to referred

100% agreed, and to some extent people _do_ need to be protected from themselves where irrational decisions are likely. But the comment I responded to referred to payday loans in general as a scam, and anyone who's bothered to study this, qualitatively or quantitatively, firmly disagrees. Note that this doesn't preclude regulated rate caps, which are motivated by the idea that, at a given rate, the innumerate/irrational being harmed outweigh the harm done by removing an emergency liferaft from those for whom it makes sense. You don't even have to be that smart or read high-quality sources to find this perspective! "Payday loans never provide value" is too dumb for even Vox[1]! The reason I'm so passionate about this topic is not just garden-variety frustration at how stupid people are. "Helping" people by controlling what they can spend their food stamps on, whom they can have sex with, or how they survive and support themselves should come with a heavy, heavy burden of rigor. History is full of elites destroying the lives of others through their malicious "compassion" and refusal to actually consider that other people live different lives with different problems. The problem with things like payday loans is that the kind of IFLScience midwits that places like HN are thick with won't bother to do the most basic of research beyond clickbaity headlines, eye-popping context-free stats, amd comedy shows that pretend to be informative. It's repulsive. [1] https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/11/5991137/john-oliver-payday-loan-postal-banking https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/11/5991137/john-oliver-pay...