The “added shit about public shaming” is not a trivial issue, and also Americans aren't particularly fond of actual credit scores or the broader credit reporting system they are part of, either.
Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra negatively another society that has taken a disliked element of your own and made it worse.
I think it could be considered trivial given how much of your life can be made an utter hell by a bad credit score. Things like not being able to finance a house when you already spend more per month on rent than a mortgage, being forced into predatory financial products because you lack the ability to get regular ones, refusal for companies to hire you for work based on your credit score, your credit history just being wrong and being saddled with the task of probably hundreds of hours of work and god knows how much money to fix it because none of the providers give a shit about helping you, the risks with identity theft, on and on and on.
As someone who has had to unfuck my credit due to idiocy in financial institutions that was completely, 100% not my fault and yet fell solely on my shoulders to handle, I assure you it is a special circle of bureaucratic hell that would easily stand toe-to-toe with the worst any governments have to offer.
Is it GOOD that it has mechanisms for that? No. But again, I emphasize: we add that ourselves to it all the same. And yes it's definitely worse when it's inscribed in the law's text, but I wouldn't say it's that different either.
> Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra negatively another society that has taken a disliked element of your own and made it worse.
Oh sure, 100%, but that presupposes that the commenter in question thinks credit reports are bad. And yeah, a fair number of Americans hate them, but like with a lot of things Americans hate, they'll also say shit like "well that's just how it is." But apparently such status-quo allyship doesn't cross into China.
The scope of damage increases, rather than decreases, the significance of expanding the set of inputs that can contribute to the damage.
Without working?! I thought that power was unique to project managers.
Landlords are part of one of the bourgeois (petit ot haut) classes, elite minorities. Their interests are not those of the median American, and are in many ways opposed to them.
And as a small landlord, renting a second house, hoping to pay for your retirement in old age, or maybe a good school for your kids, you're even more cautious.
The alternative is a year's rent in deposit, because first and last barely covers a damaged carpet, let alone a trashed place.
And that's just the damage side of things.
One of the landlords I spoke to, said that while he understood why renter protections had become so strong, it took forever to kick out a tenant not paying rent. So naturally, he was scared of renting to anyone with money troubles before.
You may disagree with these reasons, but people aren't reducing the market they can rent to for no reason.
Times were easier when most people lived in smaller towns. You knew who you rented to, and didn't need a credit bureau to vouch.
If you want to make money in a risk-averse manner, might I suggest a job instead of an investment property? You know, like the people who's money you want to take are required to prove to you they have, so you can take a nice chunk of it so they can not freeze to death? One of those. They're all over the place, according to the landlords.
> One of the landlords I spoke to, said that while he understood why renter protections had become so strong, it took forever to kick out a tenant not paying rent.
Did he happen to mention why the tenant stopped paying? Because that's probably pretty relevant to why renter protections were stopping him from throwing him out onto the street. Like, I'm sorry it's bit of a bureaucratic fuckabout to KICK SOMEONE OUT OF THEIR HOME but you know, the landlord in this scenario has the economic backing to, in some way, own an extra residence that they don't need, and the tenant they're trying to evict (probably) doesn't. So on the whole I'm okay with renter protections making that hard. One of these people is acutely more vulnerable to houselessness, and it isn't the dude with 2+ houses.
Again, if this is a problem, maybe said landlord should get a job.
This won't get far with me, and seems to me to be a pointless response.
Are you seriously of the thought that owning more than one home is wrong? And renting it to someone that cannot afford to buy a home is wrong? If so, why?
Do you get mad if that person just leaves the money in the bank, and the second home isn't built?
Are you mad people may make more than you? Do you believe everyone should just be given all the same stuff?
This is essentiall your argument.
How does that function, societally? Magic?
Wrong. My entire argument is that one of these people is already advantaged heavily in society and doesn't need further help being more advantaged, and that all business, including the "business" of renting property, has risk. Of course you're allowed to minimize risk. I suggest you get out of the business entirely, can't get more risk-free than that.
> This won't get far with me
I cannot express to you in words how little your opinion means to me.
> and seems to me to be a pointless response.
On that point however, we agree.
> Are you seriously of the thought that owning more than one home is wrong? And renting it to someone that cannot afford to buy a home is wrong? If so, why?
Because you are artificially restricting the supply of an essential good for life or business and charging for access to it. Not ownership, merely access. Numerous, well-thought of economists decry the practices of rent seeking for this exact reason: you are not adding value, you are using your financial position to restrict access to things others need and then charging them for that access.
In fact the dictionary defines rent-seeking behavior as such: "Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society. Rent-seeking activities aim to obtain financial gains and benefits through the manipulation of the distribution of economic resources."
> This is essentiall your argument.
No it isn't, your straw-man is pathetic.
The post you originally responded to, simply explained the risks involved in renting, and why a credit check is often used to reduce that risk.
As a response you went on a rant about, essentially, "screw landlords" inline with "because they have what I don't". This is effectively what you said, and you've doubled down here.
No matter what, you're blaming the wrong people. If you have an issue with how certain aspects of our free economy works, I'll listen. But blaming landlords is akin to blaming car dealerships because a car is expensive. It's finger pointing without cause.
I came into this argument sympathetic to your point of view, and I think I might have flipped my position.
OP's arguments are far from straw men.
Please review the HN guidelines before commenting further.
Thus the negative press in the US was specifically about that, with fear that if you ever, say, criticize the wrong person or expressed an unpopular opinion you'd end up paying a premium on your loan or even be unable to get a mortgage.
Since there's a fairly high opacity to the US credit scores I wouldn't be surprised to find these things added to the US credit score too as an opt-in mechanism to save money similar to how we can now choose to get a key fob to prove to our insurance companies that we drive within the speed limit.
Like I've lost count of the number of times people will comment on videos of bad drivers or whatever "what do you expect from someone driving a [brand] car financed at 28% with no money down." Like yeah maybe our credit score system here doesn't officially have a shaming mechanism, but that's the only real difference and it isn't like we don't bolt it onto the side ourselves just because we fucking hate poor people.
To be clear, not meaning to defend the social credit score, both of these systems suck and should be abolished. I just think it's hilarious how many people are like HURR HURR SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE when it was designed after America's credit score system. We prototyped it.