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HN does have a pretty clear libertarian bent, so I'm not surprised to see many expressing the idea that the responsibility lies 100% with the people doing the r

HN does have a pretty clear libertarian bent, so I'm not surprised to see many expressing the idea that the responsibility lies 100% with the people doing the renting. The situation is a lot more nuanced for me: yes, the people doing the renting do have some responsibility for this, but: 1) I don't see responsibility-shifting as justification for scummy business practices. If what you do as a business is fundamentally scummy (even if legal) then you're a scumbag, period, and deserve to be called out and taunted (and, if it were up to me, regulated out of business). The people running these rent-to-own companies (like most payday loan places, underhanded adware software pushers, etc) are scumbags and I wish the worst kind of bad karma on them, though sadly I don't actually believe in karma. 2) I don't fully understand how someone could have a total lack of empathy for the renters here, though I'm not surprised to see it. If this were a story about some startup founder who just as stupidly maxed all of his personal credit on some startup (ignoring the obvious math of how likely he is to fail, not entirely different from how some are blaming these renters for ignoring the math), there would be a lot more sympathy here, I think, due to relatability (mere exposure effect). Bad decisions are not something only poor people make, they just happen to pay a much higher (normalized) price for bad financial decisions than the rest of us because they are already so close to having nothing.

MadManE 12y ago
Bad decisions make people poor. Being poor doesn't cause you to make bad decisions.
- henrikgs 12y ago
  Except it probably does. There are a lot of research suggesting that being poor is stressful and mentally draining, rendering you more likely to make poor decisions.
- kwhitefoot 12y ago
  Of course it does. In many cases you end up with no way to make the good decisions effective. I've never been what you might call seriously poor but I was unemployed for a few months after university and while the state did pay me a small benefit and I am not a big spender I quickly reached a point where I couldn't afford to put petrol in my car (a very frugal Mini) and not long afterward could not afford bus fares. This constrains your life decisions like eating healthy food can be impossible to make not because you can't afford the food but because you cannot make the journey to the shop, buying a USD 50 dollar sofa can be can be difficult because you can't afford the fuel to travel around town looking for the bargain. Of course all these things can be done but they require a greater degree of organization of the poor than it requires of someone who already has all that he needs to just decide to buy something with money that doesn't matter. If you have a minimum wage job you will inevitably be more stressed and stress leads to bad decisions.

MadManE 12y ago

Bad decisions make people poor. Being poor doesn't cause you to make bad decisions.

henrikgs 12y ago
Except it probably does. There are a lot of research suggesting that being poor is stressful and mentally draining, rendering you more likely to make poor decisions.
kwhitefoot 12y ago
Of course it does. In many cases you end up with no way to make the good decisions effective. I've never been what you might call seriously poor but I was unemployed for a few months after university and while the state did pay me a small benefit and I am not a big spender I quickly reached a point where I couldn't afford to put petrol in my car (a very frugal Mini) and not long afterward could not afford bus fares. This constrains your life decisions like eating healthy food can be impossible to make not because you can't afford the food but because you cannot make the journey to the shop, buying a USD 50 dollar sofa can be can be difficult because you can't afford the fuel to travel around town looking for the bargain. Of course all these things can be done but they require a greater degree of organization of the poor than it requires of someone who already has all that he needs to just decide to buy something with money that doesn't matter. If you have a minimum wage job you will inevitably be more stressed and stress leads to bad decisions.