> If it could easily fetch more money, it would have been bid higher than £50.

You know that isn't true. Auctions are noisy and poorly conducted auctions are worse. This is about some combination of sadism and negligence.

Oh hohoho but that would imply that the auction is inefficient and so surely rational actors would descend upon these auctions thereby converging this discount onto the true fair value of things.

Heaven forbid we admit that markets are not comprised of spherical chickens and that disconnects exist...

Again, the debtor could have sold the bike themselves and they didn't. Bidders could have recognized the bike's value but they didn't. This is a story about OP overvaluing a bike and nothing else.

I get your point but there are more factors at play here that you might not be aware of.

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.

That sounds absolutely draconian and horrible. But the issue doesn’t seem to be the debt collection. Rather, the issue seems to be a total lack of due process.

I don't think you've even thought about this for 30 seconds.

> 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).

The point is that, before the bike was collected and put up for auction, the debtor could have sold the bike to pay the debts. Then, once the bike was put up for auction, buyers could have bid on it if it was really worth more.

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?

> the debtor could have sold the bike to pay the debts

…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.

> the debtor could have sold the bike to pay the debts

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.

Dude, some skeezy used car salesman type bought the bike and made a 350 pound profit.

Literally no one involved cared about getting the best price except the bottom-feeders attending the auction.

> Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.

The point isn’t that you’re incapable of helping yourself, it is disproportionately harder to help yourself when you’re poor.

1. The debtor probably need the motorbike, badly. He probably should have sold it to cover the debt but didn't think of that as an option. Not the smartest choice but again, he's there probably because of another set of similar choices.

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.

This is one of the more patronising comments I've ever read on HN, which is saying something.

If you don't have a vehicle you can't do anything, if this person was anywhere other than a large east coast city losing your vehicle is death. Have you ever tried to go somewhere in the south without a car? Pick two points even a couple miles away from each other around Kansas City, Kansas and genuinely think about how you would physically do it. You can't go anywhere so you can't work so you can't pay rent, you can't do anything. What is even the point of not going to prison except the fact you would have to stay in jail for a few months and you might be literally devoured by bedbugs?

This story clearly occurs in the UK.

The UK suffers from car dependence pretty much everywhere outside of London.

It’s very far from its european cousins in this regard.

> Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves.

You just argued the bike wouldn’t have been sufficient to pay the debt. How would the owner have helped himself by selling it?

OP's central claim was that the bike should have been able to cover the debt, but, due to systemic malice on the bailiff's part, the bike only covered small fraction of the debt. My point is that OP is simply over-valuing the bike. If you change OP's story to: the bailiff got a decent price for the bike and took a small fee for the service, it becomes a lot less outrageous.

The OP wrote that:

> [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)?

Those fees don’t seem unreasonably high to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bailiff was operating at a loss given the time it takes to take possession and bring the goods to auction.

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.

The point is that, regardless of whether the bailiff’s and auctioneer’s fees are eminently reasonable, it will always result in net-negative benefit to society (excepting the bailiff and auctioneer) whenever the bailiff confiscates property whose auction proceeds are less than the sum of those fees. It is therefore contrary to the public interest for the bailiff to confiscate property unless it can reasonably be expected to substantially clear those fees when auctioned.

> Then did the debtor not sell the motorbike to pay the debt?

Because (it seems from OP story) that the court blatantly stole it from them, so they never had a chance.