This is a "vice" thing. Vices are things which match this pattern like alcohol or drugs:
- many people don't indulge at all
- many people indulge occasionally to no real harm
- some people indulge in a way that makes a short term recoverable mess
- a few people get addicted and are unable to stop. May or may not also be harmed at this point, but this tends to lead to cumulative harm
- a few people really mess up tragically
We have a socially acceptable, predatory, regulated vice: credit cards with 30%. These ruin many lives.
I'm finally almost out and I'm 45. Nobody taught me in school not to use them as they are harmful. Nobody taught me how much money they will actually charge me and how much money I will lose because of them. Whereas if I had just saved my money and bought the thing out right I wouldn't have to pay any extra money.
My school failed me.
At what point should a person be responsible for their own life? I wasn't taught a lot of things; I learned them with some basic googling. You can figure out how a credit card works with a few minutes of critical thinking followed by "I should look this up". Something I would expect a 30-40yo to be able to do, no?
Once you realize what is happening it can take 20 years to get out...
It is predatory. Especially to hook teenagers on them at a young age.
It would be surprising to hear that someone obtained such a high line of credit that it took 20 years to pay off, while not understanding how credit works, but I guess that is possible
One thing that does vary is whether "it's not harming me" works out. Booze in particular has massive social consequences, drunk people harm non-drinkers not just themselves. I've never worried that degenerate gamblers leaving a slot machine parlour at 2am will attack me - but outside the bars that's definitely possible which is why they're required to hire security and have police contact
People with big gambling problems do cause massive social consequences. I know of lost family homes and separation that has massive impacts on the kids. Embezzlement occurred at the accounting firm I use due to an accountant's addiction to gambling.
Some gamblers will inevitably run out of money and resort to crime.
Maybe, surely mostly white collar crime though because of the numbers involved?
Nobody trusts junkies with $100 so it makes sense that shoplifting or burglary can get them the money they need, but a lot of people who have a gambling problem are six figures down, stealing a neighbour's PS5 is a drop in the bucket.
Oh the PS5 isn't to repay the debt. It's to bet so the big winnings can repay the debt.
I think this description is deceptive because it assumes bucket sizes ("many," "some," "a few"). Those bucket sizes work for alcohol and some recreational drugs. But they're tragically wrong for others--very very few people partake of heroin "occasionally with no real harm." You're almost certainly heading towards the last two buckets.
Actually there's been studies that show the majority of heroin users self limit their use to, yes, no real harm. The idea of the heroin user that's immediately thrown into an addiction where they start pawning Grandma's TV is propaganda.
True, but if you start counting codeine as an opiate the bucket gets a lot larger. And includes the Purdue Pharma scandal. Lots of people use opiates under medical supervision, with varying degrees of help and harm.
> assumes bucket sizes ("many," "some," "a few")
I was trying to be as vague as possible here!
yeah - this is a flawed example, post-Purdue opioid epidemic. Brief tidbits include: real pharm science showed that pain killing effects of opioids are not as effective as some existing, non-opioid medications; sales agents were paid in commissions and bonuses for sales objectives; laws were changed at a Federal level just before the epidemic; the top of the sales pyramid financially benefited in the billions of dollars.
Those pills are actually similar to heroin, yet all of that happened legally in real life, with profits flowing through legitimate financial institutions on a very large scale.
...which is definitely an improvement over their previous slogan, "when the fun stops, stop"¹.
__ ¹ coincidentally what my Dad always used to say about black tar heroin.