As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400. The bailiff took a motorbike (or scooter) that could easily have covered the debt. It was sold at auction for £50. £35 bailiff fees for taking it there and £15 auctioneer fees, £0 off the debt. It was so unfair it should have been criminal.
Yeah, the bonobo/chimp contrast shows it’s not an inevitability. We just optimized for the wrong equilibrium.
Us humans still has the genes that made us conquer and enslave the whole world, every single human culture that has ever existed enslave and murder animals, as we needed to do that to survive. You ain't gonna change those genes, so we just have to do the best we can with the genes we have and our genes are like Chimpanzees in that we want to murder and eat and exploit others, without that humans didn't get b12 and died out, so all our ancestors lived that way.
We should not underestimate the fact that where we excel is that we are better at passing off information to our offspring. This makes improvement over long periods possible as we can build off the backs of our ancestors.
Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.
You know that isn't true. Auctions are noisy and poorly conducted auctions are worse. This is about some combination of sadism and negligence.
Heaven forbid we admit that markets are not comprised of spherical chickens and that disconnects exist...
The debt in question was council tax, every household in the UK pays this at a monthly rate, something like £140 a month. But what most people don't know is that these monthly payments are technically a "gesture of goodwill" from the council, and if you are late for a payment they will really quickly take it to court and send bailiffs for the full yearly amount so you're looking at £1500 plus court fees plus bailiff fees for attending immediately. Easily £2000 from missing £150.
Next another little known fact - if you don't let the bailiffs in, they can't take anything. They can come back with the police if you let them in once. However they can levy on things that are outside, like a vehicle.
So that's what happened here, and once they levy on the vehicle you are not legally allowed to sell it if you sign the levy.
So the debtor in all likelihood ended up in this situation very quickly and could not sell the motorbike himself once the bailiff visited. As for the over valuation, I give you that but only in a very specific scenario - for the market where they sold it.
Now as for why they sold it so cheap, why would they care? They only care about their fees. It they can visit three times by only pretending to knock on the door and charge three times, they will. When it came to this motorbike, they got paid the fees for selling it, the auctioneer got their fee, and nobody involved had motivation to market it. We're not talking ebay or well marketed property auctions here.
In fact, the bailiff now gets to go back to tell them the debt isn't cleared and charge them for this visit as well.
> If it could easily fetch more money, it would have been bid higher than £50.
Have you ever been to one of these auctions? I haven't. If I want a used vehicle, I go to a trusted dealership. Few people attend auctions, hence demand is low, hence prices are low. When there's no incentive to sell something for what it's worth, the seller will put in less effort and sell it below market price.
> Then did the debtor not sell the motorbike to pay the debt?
They probably needed it. You try doing food deliveries without a vehicle. Now their job's gone.
> it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.
Well obviously. Being poor is excruciating; nobody would choose to be poor. The ones who are capable of helping themselves do—in fact, they help themselves when they're broke, and they never become truly poor in the first place (per the article's definitions).
Multiple people in this story had a financial incentive to profit from the bike, yet no one did. The only evidence we have of the bike's value is OP's claim. Does it not seem more likely that OP is simply wrong about the bike's value?
…so clearly the bike was worth more to them than its cash value.
Again: They probably needed that bike for work. Losing their job will easily cost them more than $400.
> yet no one did.
The bailiff did, and the buyer did, and they were the only parties with agency in the situation. Doesn't surprise me.
This is assuming OP’s value of the bike is correct. The fact that the debtor did not sell the bike is a datapoint that OP is overvaluing the bike.
> The bailiff did, and the buyer did, and they were the only parties with agency in the situation.
The entire room full of auction participants also had agency and chose not to bid the bike higher than 50 quid. Yet another datapoint that OP overvalued the bike.
Also, this brings me back to my main point: I find it hilarious that you don’t consider the debtor as having agency. People love to discuss the poor as if they’re helpless animals.
Literally no one involved cared about getting the best price except the bottom-feeders attending the auction.
The point isn’t that you’re incapable of helping yourself, it is disproportionately harder to help yourself when you’re poor.
2. The parent seems from the UK and I am not sure how things work there. But many auctions are "closed off" in shady ways. In one of the countries I (and some friends) have contemplated going, gangs with knives were putting people off. The gov. employees involved knew about it and do nothing.
> Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.
3. Many of the times, they are not exactly bad or lazy people but they might not have made the optimal choices. They should, probably, be penalized for it; but not by completely wrecking their life and sodomizing them for a good many years. Also back to 2, and the parent you are replying to, many times the system is designed to over-screw them in the process.
It’s very far from its european cousins in this regard.
You just argued the bike wouldn’t have been sufficient to pay the debt. How would the owner have helped himself by selling it?
> [The bike] was sold at auction for £50. £35 bailiff fees for taking it there and £15 auctioneer fees, £0 off the debt.
If this claim is true, then I think most people will still find this conduct outrageous: How is it in the public interest for the baliff to take actions that harm both the debtor (by taking the personally valuable bike) and the public (by wasting from $15 to $50 of the public's money) to the benefit of only the baliff ($35) and auctioneer ($15)?
It’s in the public’s interest to have mechanisms to quickly process insolvency in a way that attempts to fairly value property. Auctions solve that. If debtors don’t like the outcome, then they should sell the good themselves before it comes to that. Having others sell your property for you is always going to incur an additional cost.
Because (it seems from OP story) that the court blatantly stole it from them, so they never had a chance.
That was all the "proof" he needed to be against helping the poor, because if he could do it, anyone could do it.
p.s. this person has also never paid taxes in his entire life because "government is a scam"
Strangely, she did that only with comfort foods.
Eating cookies? Perfectly fine. Eating an entire bag of cookies? Gross. Unthinkable.
But how many cookies is really fine to eat? The safest best is not to know, either by breaking them into uncountable pieces or leaving some in the bag for someone else to finish (meaning, you ate less than a bag of cookies and are safe).
And for what it's worth, no one deserves blame for their cookie habits.
(joking, but not nearly as much as I wish I was)
I do this for any or all of the following reasons:
* (culture) it is polite to leave something for the next person
* (I have roommates) I don't want to be the last person who finished something. I would be obliged to replace it.
For the typical girl thing, I haven't seen this behavior in real life with my family members or friends. I have heard of the concept on social media.
Yup! Bank gave me an overdraft when I was 16. At 37 I'm still in debt connected to that first bit of "free" money.
I've never earned above £0, and at this point it's too late to care. They can write me off as a minor loss when I kick it haha
You're born, you keep your head down, and you die - if you're lucky.
If you have never earned above 0 at age 37, that suggests that you have a personal situation that actually prevents you from working, not so different from a disabled person might face. Just as tragic is the fact that people who do work full time and earn very little also end up in similar debt spirals.
In benevolent societies such people might end up being helped by the social safety net, but in less benevolent societies, they often end up on the streets. There are active experiments in decreasing benevolence right now across many societies.
Homelife being bad = bad grades
bad grades = no support for further education
no basic (or further) education = disadvantage in entry jobs
no experience in entry jobs = red flag for employers (even for other entry level jobs in future where better educated folks fresh from school are also applying).
The larger the gap, the bigger the red flag.
I was in this trap, I just struck a particular lottery that the thing I love most (computers) was a booming industry which had no formal education requirements.
Or read a book like "Your money or your life"
You're a sysadmin and what not -- how can that be?
He’s trying to help you empathise that in reality these kinds of holes are really difficult to escape from; moreso than you think on first glance. It’s also very easy to fall into them even if you think you’re immune. Most people are about 2 bad decisions from poverty.
In light of that, your response is just horrible.
1) The nature of interest in unsecured loans is high interest (almost by definition) and increasingly so if you are seen as a credit risk. Thus small debts compound over time making them unbearable for longer.
2) Our friend is merely Keeping up with the Jones’ despite never going above a zero balance.
One of these is uncharitable and ridiculous- the other is a known issue that keeps people in poverty.
I’ll let you figure out which.
You said:
> Most people are about 2 bad decisions from poverty.
My reaction was to this. I agreed with you, and added the cause: utter financial recklessness. People spending money on things they don't need instead of saving say a quarter of their salary.
For some time I was earning a couple times the average salary in my region of the world. Yet I found that spending about the average salary was more than enough to live a very comfortable life. I feel this is not the norm for whatever reason: most people inflate spending to match their income, and then they're 2 bad decisions (or even some bad luck) from poverty.
I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately. Once you need to involve other people the burden grows substantially.
When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need, instead of hoarding five metric tonnes of crap that you'll never use.
If you haven't used something in the past 5 years, you can almost certainly toss it.
Ah but if only it were so simple. In my woodworking shop, in pretty much every project I end up using odd scraps for either temporary scaffolding or jigs or what have you that would be difficult to buy. You would have to go out of your way to buy a large board, and cut it up intentionally. Even then you would not have as rich a set of scraps. Actually the value is not in the material itself but in the variety of the shapes.
What I need is time. Whereas buying things is stupidly time consuming, running completely counter to what is needed.
I don't have it all. Sometimes I have no choice but to go buy parts when a breakdown occurs, but that's never a welcome experience. You're looking at a good hour or more to source even if it is available locally, and often you have to travel far and wide to find someone who has it in stock. Worse, sometimes the only stock available is on the other side of the world in who knows where, leaving you down for days while you wait for it to show up...
Once someone invents a magical teleporter that can spit out what you need in a split second on demand, then money to spend when you need it becomes more powerful than already having what you need, but we're a long way from seeing that become reality.
I for one welcome out capitalist induced pack rat disorders for the elderly as it guarantees that vintage and retro survives.
I mean, I'm quite well off (and have never experienced true financial "poorness" at all), and I still have this mindset. Our hyper-capitalist society will have you on the streets for even the the most minor setbacks. Everything feels like a house of cards that could collapse from the smallest breeze.
I just replaced a faulty AC adapter and kept the old one in case the new one fails and the faulty old one will remain an option to repair if I can't repair the newer one.
Silicon Valley engineer income and wealth now, but still extremely uncomfortable spending money that isn’t necessary. My partner grew up quite differently and doesn’t understand why I’m so frugal with money given my relatively high income.
And yet my mum's family were raised that they were broke, not poor.
There were definitely some echoes/overlap like we were raised that wasting food is one of the most egregious sins one can ever commit, and my mum has a compulsion of overpacking things with meat after growing up eating nothing but I know that she is definitely more broke than poor and was therefore able to reverse her fortunes.
Similarly, if you know people who grew up in Mainland China during the early years of the PRC, you can tell that while everyone had it tough, some people were poor while others were broke and this then can help explain the divergences of their outcomes when riding the wave of growth.
As a result my up bringing was filled with lessons to play it safe, don’t take risks, get a stable job etc.
Its interesting that the same mentalities that get us out of poverty are not the same ones that make people rich.
You could naively assume that competence around money would be universal.
Both my parents have been in the top 15-10% income bracket, yet they pile up all kind of useless garbage, very often refuse to invest in proper stuff because "it's too expensive", always try to find ways to get things "cheaper" and will haggle artisans to get the cheapest job possible (and then complain when the work is done poorly).
They do not come from poor family and were never really in need. Their brothers and sisters do not show the same behaviors and have built more desirable lives/legacies on half the income. It all comes from mental issues.
I largely disagree on the narrative of poor people doom loop. If you are around those long enough you will understand that they really do make stupid decisions and cannot figure out things correctly. Giving them more money do not really fix the problem, they just get bigger money problem and rarely end up in a comfortable situation.
Is this not the doom loop? People are poor because they don't know how to manage their money, and that keeps them poor.
If it were common knowledge that payday loans were a scam / terrible financial decision then there wouldn't be a dozen in every poor neighborhood. Somewhat related is the newfound ability to finance absolutely everything, including your $20 doordash order. It's never been easier for someone to rocket deep into debt because of their lack of financial literacy.
And of course vendors make these terrible decisions look very attractive. In a nation where diabetes and high blood pressure is rampant because fast food ads look so good, it's no wonder that this same nation struggles with financial literacy, because advertisers make these deicions look very good.
Of course poor folks know how bad payday lenders are. They're poor, not stupid. They use them because they live on razor-thin margins and life happens.
Poor folks generally manage their money down to the dollar. They have to, or they'll be out on the street.
All of the things you mentioned are middle-class problems and have nothing to do with the horrific grind that is being poor.
My father manages employees that constantly have garnishment on their salaries because of some unpaid debt. Yet they make decent wage and could afford an OK life if they didn't blow most of it on stupid stuff.
So what I mean is that you cannot put all the blame on the "system" and the marketers selling appetising food or whatnot. Those people keep making those choices themselves and outside out of taking their liberty there is not much you can do about it. I actually think the current system affords them a better life than they could otherwise.
From your perspective/experience, what would constitute the minimum viable branch in such a situation? E.g., if you were receiving a donation, how much would it have to exceed to get you out of that situation? Or if a one-time donation wouldn't do it, what else would be needed?
Obviously not looking for exact numbers here, just wondering about the orders of magnitude.
Otherwise you very much risk wandering in to social services, and managing this can be unfair too.
If you really want to hold me to a number, then each country has a “poverty index” of some form, if you are able to assist with a roof over someones head and provide them with as much as needed to be over the poverty line, then you’re well on your way to dragging someone out of being poor. The important caveat is one time investments (like buying a cheap car, fixing a car or getting rid of a fine) are sometimes needed and this is what separates poor from everything else: being able to invest in common sense things that are simply impossible because the money simply does not exist to do it.
Being a lifeline to those in need is the best possible thing you can be in this case, as you’re taking the “it’s not cheap being poor” mantra away.
Does your employer have an “infinite commitment” to pay your salary?
Of course they do, but it isn’t framed as such.
We’re talking about social support networks here basically, the majority of actually poor people have nowhere to turn (or too much pride to turn anywhere).
There are some people who will be a bottomless pit of investment, and it is because of those that we think social support cannot work at all. The drug addicts, the gamblers.
but for each of those, immediately visible and obvious deadbeats there are 2 or more of people like my mother, who had no family to speak of and was raising a child alone. Or someone like the sysadmin in this thread, who has gainful employment in the first world, but can never get out of his debt hole.
My Grandfather grew up poor during the Great Depression, working at a very young age to help support his family. Decades later after attending college on a full scholarship and becoming a doctor his own children would be embarrassed when they were in restaurants. He would see other diners leave their table and a plate would still have food on it, and he would take it and eat it instead of ordering for himself. It wasn't that he didn't understand the norms of eating at a restaurant, it was a pervasive fear, justified when growing up though no longer, of wasting anything. This general mentality was extremely common for anyone that grew up up during the depression. An extremely large number of anyone that lives in constant stress and anxiety for a long period of time experience something similar.
The constant open loop on everything you own, terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else; the constant churn of second-hand (and cheap/disposable) things that are already close to death before they come into your possession and- crucially: the crushing weight of knowing that any financial roadbump is existential.
As the author mentions, a £50 fine might as well be £50,000- its unpayable, and leads to a sort of doom-spiral of lending to avoid worse consequences. Easily you can end up in unmanageable debt, in rare cases prison, its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat.
It’s hard to convey this, and what it does to your mentality- I am now built mentally to think quite fiscally conservative and do not take debts or put savings into investments like my peers. I am well off but a fraction of what I could have been had I not has this mentality.
You have to live it to understand it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, its a tarpit and getting out of it without someone handing you a branch (and if you no longer have the strength to pull yourself out) then you’ll be stuck in it forever.