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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25031 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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Yeah this is an underrated terrible part of modern life. I personally think we need to massively reign in credit card companies given the fact that if someone carries a huge debt load for even half a year, it can set them back a decade in their financial life. It's frankly insane what we allow here.

As is common, trying to alleviate the suffering of the wretched (in a paternalistic rather than charitable way in this case) results in more suffering for everyone else. Credit cards are great. You can buy things without carrying cash around, without being present, without having to apply for credit at every place you might buy things. You don't need to trust the merchants and they don't need to trust you. And you don't have to pay for this service if you don't want to. But as with many useful things, you can get hurt with it, and trying to make it "safer" will almost certainly increase cost and reduce utility.

Credit cards are moronic. Debit cards are great. If you have to put small ticket item on credit, it is good to have some friction in the system to think twice whether it is a good idea.

Debit cards violate the whole "need to trust the merchant" thing. Fraud on your credit card means the bank is out the money. Fraud on your debit card means YOU are out the money until the situation is resolved.

Fraud on your credit card is nearly impossible nowadays. At least here in EU you have to have secondary (sms or bank app) confirmation for every online transaction.

The EU may be a crime-free paradise, but there's still plenty of credit card fraud in the US. And not all of it from online transactions.

In my estimation, in my country you'd have to do something like visiting a blatant phishing website to get scammed out of your money. I've heard of no cases where a physical vendor could do that. What are some typical cases in the US?

Given theNybbler's environment, the first thought would be credit card skimmers. They're not common, but urban areas finding 'modifications' to gas stations happens enough I've seen it in person. Moving to NFC/smart card transactions rather than magstripe helps, but we haven't fully migrated over, in no small part because the US chip cards kinda suck, so we still have magstripe and a lot of card issuers having to deny sketchy transactions. Most people who do it get caught pretty quick, but only after doing a lot of damage.

Less common is the old analog loophole: someone writing down (or taking a picture of) a card number, name, and CVV code.

Most online vendors also need zip, too, but if you're stealing card numbers in a diner, you can make some educated guesses about zip codes pretty easily.

I don't know how they're done, except it's not phishing. Bizarro charges appear on the card, I call the credit card company (or their fraud detection unit calls me) and it's taken care of. In one case the source was obvious because I had happened to use two different cards at the same vendor, and both got hit while no others did.

That just means you buy everything with cash and only trust a few big merchants like Amazon with your debit card information. I don't see why that's a big deal. Fuck credit cards.

You don't see why making it impossible to operate as a small business online is a big deal?

That just means you buy everything with cash and only trust a few big merchants like Amazon with your debit card information.

I buy stuff that isn't available on Amazon. Some of those merchants apparently haven't had the best security practices. With credit cards... that's between the issuer and the merchant, all I have to do is tell the issuer that I didn't make the charges.

I mean TBF there’s third party processing companies that do it now. Like Shop- make an account with them is mandatory to check out at some of the retailers I use that stock not available on Amazon products.

There's a thing that can let you pay without carrying cash around, without being present and without having to apply for credit. It's called debit cards. You spend money you actually own, as opposed to some weird exercise of "paying back the money you spent during the month" that I once was surprised to learn most Americans apparently have to engage in. You can't be preyed upon with tricky overdraft fees because if you don't have the money, you simply can't spend it.

You can't be preyed upon with tricky overdraft fees because if you don't have the money, you simply can't spend it.

Oh if only that were true. I found out the hard way that my bank would happily let transactions through that my checking account couldn't cover, then charge me a $50 fee on top of having to bring the account positive. There are some very predatory banks in the US.

That aside credit cards do have other advantages. They aren't insurmountable but do exist.

  • A business which expects you might have incidental charges (say, a hotel which offers room service billed to the room) will put a massive hold on your card if you use a debit card, because they can't be sure they will be paid otherwise. Was quite a shock to me when I was traveling at 20 and found I had no money in my checking account after I checked in to the hotel. This can generally be worked around by getting the hotel to remove the ability to bill those things to the room, but a credit card is easier.
  • While both credit cards and debit cards will work with you to return fraudulent charges or things you dispute with a merchant, when you use a debit card you are out real actual money until it gets resolved. With a credit card it's just a pending charge on your account, for which I don't believe you even pay interest. So you don't really lose out on the use of that money as the process resolves.
  • Credit cards do have rewards in the US (though I'm told not in European countries). These can be, but aren't always, profitable for you if you take advantage of all of them. The credit card company is banking on you not taking advantage, but if you can (and have the discipline to follow through) it's a good deal.
  • You do in fact need a credit history, at least here in the US. Even bad credit is often reckoned to be better than no credit. Having a credit card and paying off the balance establishes that credit history (though it isn't the only way).

So there are rational reasons to use a credit card. You don't have to, but they can be beneficial if you can avoid the trap of spending money you don't have.

Oh if only that were true. I found out the hard way that my bank would happily let transactions through that my checking account couldn't cover, then charge me a $50 fee on top of having to bring the account positive. There are some very predatory banks in the US.

Yeah, and if you use a credit card that won't happen. (Since 2009, they can't even charge you an over-the-limit fee unless you specifically opt-in).

You can't be preyed upon with tricky overdraft fees

Most banks will let you overdraw your account.

Mine doesn't do so by default.

Mine tricks people into signing up for "overdraft protection" (even the name is Orwellian!) with a story that it will save you from embarrassment at the grocery store if your card declines or something, and doesn't tell you anything about the $35 fees (and how they are completely silent so that you have no idea you are in the red until you actually remember to log in and check your balance, so it is very easy to overdraft several times and get nailed with a fee each time). I went online and turned it off once I figured it out, but that was years after I got my first bank account.

In 2009 or so, a little after Chase purchased my bank WaMu, they fucked up whatever data transfer the acquisition involved. My debit card ended up pegged to a backup savings account (with like $500 in it) rather than my chequing account (with $50,000 in it). This all happened completely silently, and obviously without my consent. I didn't find out until they finally declined a transaction - after charging me $350 in overdraft """protection""" (man, you're right, that is such an evil name) for around $50 in small purchases. Like you, I didn't even know it was on by default, because there was no chance I'd ever need it.

When I went in to, very angrily, get them to reverse this, they a) told me that it was too large an amount for the agent to easily refund, and b) still took the chance to upsell me on other services. Sigh. I think I finally got it through their stupid heads that they were about to lose a customer (and possibly get sued - not sure how practical that is for a mere $350, but I sure hope the system is set up so that banks can't simply steal money without consequences).

I can only imagine how poorly it goes when somebody who's barely scraping by gets screwed over by these people. The modern world is just too complex for humans.

The day before I went to move out to an apartment for the first time, my credit union creatively applied charges and deposits to drop me into the negatives, then charged me $35 per transaction. They functionally stole $1500 from me, and then raided my mother's and sister's accounts when mine ran out. Then stonewalled, insisting that there was just nothing they could do about it before I had to leave to be two hours away at college, now broke.

When I set up my daughter with her first account, I went on a very nasty rant about overdraft protection, right in front of the banker lady, until we clarified 10 different times that there was absolutely no overdraft "protections" set for her account.

I can only imagine how poorly it goes when somebody who's barely scraping by gets screwed over by these people.

Why imagine? This happens every single day all over the western world. There are entire industries devoted specifically to screwing over the poor and struggling, and there's so much profit in payday loans and other loan-sharking behavior that criminal gangs fought violent conflicts over them in the not-so-distant past. It has been known as an incredibly pernicious social evil since at least the time of the old testament (see the biblical prohibitions on usury), and any society that cares for its people maintains those prohibitions because fucking over the lower classes like this is bad for the rest of society too - unethical exploiters get financially rewarded, and the desperate problems caused by the underclasses being in terrible financial situations leads to increased crime and anti-social behavior.

I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation. Yes credit cards are convenient, no I don't think the societal ills they unleash on the financial illiterate are worth the amount of convenience they provide. I like having them, and don't think we should get rid of the entire industry, but I'd be happy to make it significantly more inconvenient to use them if we could stop the predatory behavior.

I'm perfectly fine with increasing cost and reducing utility in this situation.

Yes, of course you are. Because you value the wretched above all others, because that is the general rule everyone is taught. This is itself a problem with modernity, if modernity goes back to AD 1 anyway.

I do not value the wretched above all others. I value God. I think there are plenty of ways in which we should make life harder for the poor, in fact. Like restricting healthcare and social security and such. That being said, I still don't think that promoting ruinous usury is a good.

I do not value the wretched above all others. I value God.

Unfortunately, as you probably guessed from my AD 1 reference, Christianity values the wretched above all others.

No I understood the reference, and I disagree with your take on Christianity. The point of Christianity is to become like God. "God became man so that man could become God."

While an obsessive focus on compassion for the weak and wretched is indeed an outgrowth of Christianity, I personally see it as a cancerous and false one, as many educated and thinking Christians do nowadays.

The point of Christianity is to become like God. "God became man so that man could become God."

That sounds like a heresy, mate. Better let a specialist check it out. There are catholic priests in your vicinity.

Hah, I'm literally quoting St. Athanasius. This is why I'm Orthodox. ;P

Oh, I know, that's the joke/point : This is specifically eastern orthodox, not christianity in general. Neither the catholics nor mainline protestant churches I'm aware of would sign off that statement. If anything, they'd consider it a dramatic misunderstanding, not just a minor point of contention.

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Except in this context Christianity directly opposes usury, the problematic and exploitative behavior in question. For some reason (I legitimately have no answer) most modern Christians have just completely ignored the teachings on usury and how bad it is. Even if you want the wretched to suffer, usury and issues like this cause problems that damage society as a whole - unless you have active sadism and want to make society and your own life worse to make the wretched suffer even more, preventing this kind of thing is to the advantage of the non-wretched as well.

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