I somehow continue to believe that a self-employed man (especially one fishing/hunting for a living) can afford to be a prouder human being than one depending on wages, more in command of designing his own life-style (the similarity to the difference between a lawyer with a private practice and a high ranking manager in a corporation is striking though)
- that’s why it amazed me that it was OK for them to grant so much power and independence to their women (however, the island of Patmos is a bit untypical insofar as the family lives in a house which is the undisputed property of Mama who will only pass it on to a daughter not to a son and who has acquired it either as dowry or found some way of working herself to the ground to acquire one by for example taking care of an old woman without family for 12 years for the inheritance. No boy is allowed to marry before his sister has a house of her own. Do not know how they do it now, 30 years later, when the seamen jobs by which they financed it presumably are all taken by the guys from Asia.) Maybe tourism helped but what is going to happen if that dwindles – will they go back to being dirt-poor again – all in one life-time?

The understanding was that if the husband ever got his hands on his pay packet even for a minute, he would spend it all on alcohol and prostitutes before he ever made it home.

It seems to me that the most certain way to control consumer borrowing is to establish statutory guidelines for every form of loan or credit facility, such that no borrower will have to make any decision except whether or not to apply. If the guidelines were mathematically formulated, and there were no loans permitted without full documentation, then the number of defaults would be drastically reduced.

I also believe that we need to reestablish the statutory usury limits, and apply those to the APR, not the simple interest rate.

These requirements would make it very difficult for banks to develop financial products that were not balanced and reasonable to have in the market place. They would be the most proactive form of consumer protection.

That’s a statistic that can be understood by everyone. Thanks!

I posit that a functioning regulatory scheme in this space would be quite simple in principle. It would exist to foster competition at a level that matters to customers.

For example in the credit card arena, perhaps you could force disclosure of a very simple statistic – what was the median amount of non-principal charges paid, over the past year, by customers who owned +/- $100 around the balance you’re currently carrying, with the rules that would apply to you if you switched. Now make sure those rules apply for at least a year. No changing them without notice.

We do this sort of thing for gas mileage. Why couldn’t we do it for credit cards?

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html

And then there are the radical opponents who feel that the principle reflected should be to cause the greatest benefit to the credit card companies, disregarding any rights of the consumer. They draw strength from the observation that things seem to work this way.

Furthermore, one side gets to revise the language at any time and send out new terms in fine print whenever it wants. Also, non-negotiable.

Any dispute is resolved by partial and corrupted arbitrators, as per the boilerplate.

And everyone still pretends there has been a meeting of the minds.

What a great system!

that’s what they keep telling us about the Nazis, it was all the fault of the uneducated emotionalised masses
I think myths like that are so persistent because they allow the educated to keep adoring Heidegger and his ilk for their deepness or whatever and to never ever mention their support for the MasterRace or whatever else they found to admire in those riding boot wearing black clad clean coiffed young man