You can also look at it from another angle, which is that companies can and will ruthlessly exploit people without other options or choices, followed by hiding fees, clauses etc designed to keep people coming back.

I don't think this is a problem of regulation run amuck at all. It reminds me a lot of how games whose primary focus is gambling can and do extensively reach out to children in order to either earn money through advertising or by making kids into gambling consumers.

Consumers may demand it, but you have to look at what companies do to increase demand and keep repeat customers. You could argue that if people didn't want to play those games they wouldn't exist; I argue that companies create consumers through malicious policies and advertising.

> If people didn't want these loans, the companies would not exist.

Careful, you can justify all sorts of scams this way. Just substitute any kind of illegal or misleading behavior. Eg., to take it to an extreme: If the people didn't want the Nigerian prince scam, they wouldn't keep it going!

I have conflicted feelings about payday loans. When I was young and broke with no credit, I've used payday loans in emergency situations (medical bills, car failure etc). I knew full well I was being gouged but my only other options were illegal loan sharks or catastrophic failure (eg loss of job because no vehicle). I was happy to take the loan even at usurious rates.

OTOH in the payday office there were obvious addicts on benefits who were being skimmed every month and could never get ahead of their debt.

Does the need to protect vulnerable people who make bad choices outweigh my need for a high-risk emergency loan? It's not a straightforward ethical situation.

> Arguably, the consumers that the CPB is protecting is those who are aware of the fees and conditions but still require payday loans, who would be excluded from consideration by the new rules [1], which do not change the interest rate requirements but exclude some customers from eligibility.

I'm not sure many such people exist. Surely the vast majority of payday loan companies' customers are not these kinds of people, but rather, people who are being taken advantage of.

"Also, the official, who spoke to journalists on condition of anonymity, said that if the rule had kicked in, some two-thirds of borrowers wouldn't qualify for a payday loan."

... pretty brutal. From the CFPB[1], 82% of loans are renewals, and ~50% are longer cycles of debt. So, naively, of the 66% of people no longer eligible, one might expect 75% (50%/66%) of those to be stuck in a debt cycle and 25% (16%/66%) to no longer have access to credit.

[1] https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201403_cfpb_report_payda...

This is an excellent point.

It's just one point though. Many of these comapnies engage in a very scummy behavior. Just read the linked PDF.

IRL, scummy behavior often gets you ahead of the honest competitors.