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Comment by JBlue42 | Hacker News Reader

Great story and something I had to help my parents deal with as well (though not to this extent).

I personally think payday lending should be banned nationwide. The thing is, there are people that depend on that sort of resource or small loans so what is a better way to do this that doesn't lead to bad outcomes?

There was all the hoopla over Muhummad Yunas and microloans back in the day and P2P lending now. I assume there will be some sort of blockchain P2P lending soon as well.

Also, I used to watch Dirty Jobs every now and then and sometimes the environment or role would look pretty gross but I can't imagine having to be one of these people as a job. Swimming in real filth is probably better for the soul than swimming in this immoral filth.

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> I personally think payday lending should be banned nationwide.

The problem is that this just moves the lending into the black market, and victims get even less protection.

That's why I wrote a sentence that followed that one asking:

The thing is, there are people that depend on that sort of resource or small loans so what is a better way to do this that doesn't lead to bad outcomes?

Payday lending itself isn't the problem. It's the usury that's the problem. Unfortunately, that was deregulated, so states are unable to enforce their own anti-usury laws.

I didn't know there had been regulations. It sounds like there might still be some in place but maybe they aren't adequate enough or as enforceable (or politically chosen not to enforce):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury#United_States

In the following country analysis, I was surprised to see Canada set a limit of 60%/yr, which seems incredibly high. Japan seems to have a decent policy.

Well, as it says, there's no national law. However, the law followed is not the law where the borrower resides, but the law where the lender is headquartered. Which is why so many of the payday lenders are headquartered in New Jersey and South Dakota; those states were willing to gut their consumer protection laws in order to lure jobs.

It just seems that there other better jobs, at least in New Jersey. I would rather work on a fracking site in SD than sell my soul but to each their own I guess.

Me too, but there are some incredibly shitty people out there.

Blockchain P2P lending would solve this particular issue very well, since its all recorded on a public ledger.

That's one thing I've been curious about when trying to read up on blockchain this week.

I think the tech may be there but being able to make it publicly accessible and understandable will be the major hurdle.

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