Agreed. But I wouldn't say that MOST debts are a moral obligation.
If you borrow money, and you agree to pay it back, there should be a good faith effort to do so.
But that is only one type of debt.
In the US, where I live, Apartments are incredibly bad about charging fees after you move out, and give you very little recourse before sending you to collections.
Parking tickets, and red light camera tickets are huge sources of revenue for the city, and Seattle uses them when they need to increase city coffers.
I look at it this way, if they're not going to play by the rules, I won't either.
If I borrow from a person, I'll bleed to death in the snow to make sure they get paid back. But from a corporation? Their losses are priced into their interest rate. I'll still pay them back of course, but if I lose my job, have no income, I'm not crying over it.
That sounds exactly like my justification for stealing! Businesses usually have insurance to cover losses from theft. (And if they don't, that's on them.) And who's paying for that insurance? Right: Their customers. So it's kind of like: Unless you steal from them, they're stealing from you!
You're entitled to your opinion. Perhaps you'll understand the other side when your small business pops, you've got no income, and you exhaust any savings you have.
Now... imagine your small business popped, you had no income, and you exhausted all your savings... because too many of your customers didn't pay for the goods/services they obtained from your small business. That is quite the moral pickle to be in, if you ask me.
(Forgive me if I misunderstood... but your reply to my comment leads me to believe your business went under due to people skipping out on their debt to you.)
I'm sorry for your loss. But this is why we should all strive to repay our debts... even to corporations[1]. I would imagine that some of your customers that stiffed you may have had the very attitude you described when you said "But from a corporation? Their losses are priced into their interest rate." They, too, may have assumed that your loss was priced into your rates. It must not have been. Perhaps other businesses don't either. It makes you wonder just how many people/business get totally screwed by people defaulting on debt to them. You suggested that chasing might understand differently if s/he had lost a business. Of course you are also entitled to your opinion. But, honestly, I'm a little sad that you don't see the other side of it, having been shattered by people not making good on their debt to you.
[1] I understand that Corporation ("big C") is generally directed at the big, huge things like Walmart and Chevron. But corporation ("little c") is just a legal term and can still be the small business down the street.
I agree! Paying for things you've taken from corporations only helps perpetuate the Global Corporate Hegemony. Racking up a bunch of debts and then making excuses about why you aren't obligated to pay them is probably actually more morally correct than paying for the things you take.
Unless you take things from people. People are different. Then you should pay for those things by bleeding all over the snow or whatever. (I don't know how money works in your country. In the US we usually just use dollars. There's not much snow right now and having everyone's blood everywhere can lead to public health problems. See also: Ebola.)
Anyway. Thank god there are no people at corporations. And thank god all corporations are the size of Walmart and can easily withstand financial losses due to non-payment.
Let me get this straight, you don't feel bad about owing Walmart $10, because they factor that loss into their business model, and expect it to occur?
Well, you should care, because they factor it in by increasing prices for consumers. You're just getting everyone else that shops at Walmart to cover your debt. That's irresponsible, and I see no difference between owing Walmart $10 and owing your friend $10.
Indeed, perhaps your morals are different. I generally believe the whole CC industry is on extremely shaky moral grounds. More like sinking sand really. It only works because it can wreck poor and down-on-their-luck people.
This[1] is the type of situation where I believe the victims(yes, I'm using that word) deserve to have their debt removed.
It's possible that you will change your mind after reading David Graeber's _Debt: The First Five Thousand Years". If not, it's still a fascinating book tracing the creation and evolution of monetary and credit systems from antiquity to the present day.
I second the recommendation below to read Graeber's "Debt".
It is really a fabulous book, and can help explain why many people in many cultures feel as you do, who benefits from that belief, but also how debt has never historically been about moral obligations but has always been a contract between two parties, with limitations on both party's obligations.
a bank reposessing a house and ousting a family is a much more immoral act than being unable to pay for one. moral considerations in interactions with a corporation is foolish
The day that credit becomes a civil right, I move to Mongolia. You pay for what you have; nobody owes you anything. To view a house as some natural right is an upside-down view of the world to me.
natural rights are arbitrary and we decide what they are as a culture. god didn't pass your right to free speech to moses on mount sinai. i'm not arguing for guaranteed credit (as i already oppose capitalism) but i think guaranteed housing is both noble and easily achievable in the developed world
Believing that housing should be a natural right may be a reasonable position (even if I disagree that it is practical), but surely you don't believe that everybody is entitled to indefinite ownership of an arbitrarily expensive house. I don't have statistics, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think most people whose houses are foreclosed end up paying rent for an apartment, rather than living on the street.
opposition to capitalism entails opposition to private property, as the latter only emerges from the former (in the formal sense, where one of the states' primary roles is enforcing property law). i don't claim to have a roadmap for how this would be incorporated in the united states were the social order suddenly upended
I thought we were just talking about whether it's immoral for a bank to foreclose on a home owner... Not sure where all this opposition-to-capitalism stuff came from.
