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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25036 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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Presumably the banks have an easier time beating money out of rich guys who default than I do. That's why the banks lend money and I don't. At any rate my first thought is not "will he pay me back" but "if he doesn't, can I make him".

Looking at the US situation from the outside it just looks like banks expect a consistent credit history only because credit card use is widespread, and credit card use is widespread because banks expect a consistent credit history. Aside from minor benefits of credit cards over debit cards the primary beneficiary appear to be the banks.

Presumably the banks have an easier time beating money out of rich guys who default than I do.

To the extent that they can take collateral, sure. But the situation was a car, a depreciating asset. The collateral isn't nearly as valuable. Besides which, even having collateral doesn't mean there's no reason to try to lower risk further by only lending to people who are likely to be trustworthy.

Looking at the US situation from the outside it just looks like banks expect a consistent credit history only because credit card use is widespread, and credit card use is widespread because banks expect a consistent credit history.

That's not true at all. Banks expect a consistent credit history because they want to establish that you are a low-risk loan. It has nothing to do with credit cards.

That's not true at all. Banks expect a consistent credit history because they want to establish that you are a low-risk loan. It has nothing to do with credit cards.

I would assume that banks are less reluctant giving loans to people with no credit history in countries where credit card use is not as widespread. Consider the higher education inflation. Same thing. In theory all employers want someone who meets a certain standard of diligence. In practice, having everyone go through the gauntlet of getting diligence credentials simply raises the standards and makes them overly rigid.

Two things

  1. you can build credit history / credit score without ever owning a credit card, credit cards are just easy af to access

  2. if Trump banned credit scores overnight and scrubbed them all from every server with genie magic, banks would still lend you money tomorrow, interest rates would just rise across the board to cover the increased risk resulting from the lesser ability to judge the risk of default

That's certainly possible. But that doesn't make it true. To settle the issue with any real certainly one would need to quantity loan reluctance in some way, then show that it is indeed less in those other countries.

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