> Your arguments are entirely theoretical while ignoring the fact that payday loan businesses are regularly shut down for fraud
I alluded to empirical evidence of their usefulness. Here's a study from the FDIC[1]. It's dated, but there are structural conclusions about the way payday loans work and why their rates are so high.
I don't see the relevance of specific payday lenders being shut down for fraud. Individual cases of fraud should be cracked down upon, and its widespread prevalence in an industry suggests that regulation is potentially a good idea. But neither of these automatically negate the usefulness of a service, just as the bad behavior of the banking industry doesn't make a bank account useless.
> Likewise, just because I post one extreme example of payday loan businesses being a fraud doesn't invalidate the entire industry.
Yes, this is my point. The comment I responded to and that I quoted from said:
> I debated reaching out to one of those payday loan places, despite the fact that I knew they were scams
The point of my comment is that they can be useful, and the GP's shame at considering an option he "knew" was a scam is unwarranted and down to midwit elites who are quick to fuck the poor over in the name of paternalistic, performative virtue, but never bother to understand them as agents making decisions that are sometimes unintuitively rational.
I alluded to empirical evidence of their usefulness. Here's a study from the FDIC[1]. It's dated, but there are structural conclusions about the way payday loans work and why their rates are so high.
I don't see the relevance of specific payday lenders being shut down for fraud. Individual cases of fraud should be cracked down upon, and its widespread prevalence in an industry suggests that regulation is potentially a good idea. But neither of these automatically negate the usefulness of a service, just as the bad behavior of the banking industry doesn't make a bank account useless.
> Likewise, just because I post one extreme example of payday loan businesses being a fraud doesn't invalidate the entire industry.
Yes, this is my point. The comment I responded to and that I quoted from said:
> I debated reaching out to one of those payday loan places, despite the fact that I knew they were scams
The point of my comment is that they can be useful, and the GP's shame at considering an option he "knew" was a scam is unwarranted and down to midwit elites who are quick to fuck the poor over in the name of paternalistic, performative virtue, but never bother to understand them as agents making decisions that are sometimes unintuitively rational.
[1] https://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/cfr/2005/wp2005/2005-09...