Dashcam repo

Cruising the streets with a license plate camera to win debt-collector bounties.

If you want a motto for the current economic situation, a touchstone to check in on whenever you hear about a new business model or a new depredation, I suggest Michael Hudson’s bedrock claim: “Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.” 40 years of wage stagnation, combined with spiraling health, housing and education costs have produced a mountain of unpayable debts.

Our society is organized around a small number of creditors extracting rents from an ever-growing pool of debtors whose ability to pay is eroded by every penalty and every emergency triggered by the lack of a cushion:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. We can pass laws that limit access to bankruptcy, we can pass laws that allow creditors to take your pay, to take your things, to take your home. We can pass laws that let creditors go after your children for your debts, so that even death won’t wipe the slate clean, so that debt becomes an intergenerational cycle:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

We can do all that, and still: debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. It’s a lesson every loan-shark…