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Comment by Haul4ss | Hacker News Reader

No it's not. You can be behind on payments without filing for bankruptcy. You can have a debt sent to collections without filing for bankruptcy.

There are all sorts of cases where a person is not trustworthy with money that do not show up in the public record. That's why credit bureaus came to exist, and although their business practices and data security leave much to be desired, I understand why they exist in the first place.

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Credit bureaus came to exist because of this murkiness when it comes to contractual obligations. If you provide a grace period around a deadline, it's on you, and not something which should be punished against.

If they broke the contract, it's on you to bring them to court. Apparently companies thought it was to expensive to enforce contracts, so they decided to create this extrajudicial system.

My point is, if you can't physically pay your debts, you can file for bankruptcy. That is the public record.

The average duration of a contested civil court case is on the order of 2-3 years. The courts are not going to resolve even a significant fraction of delinquencies, and are not a real recourse in the main for creditors.

I agree! Until that aspect is solved, the standards of when you get reported and for what are entirely private, arbitrary, and have long-lasting effects on your overall wellbeing.

So, like, in a parallel universe where we reinvent the civil legal system, you might have a point? But in this universe, you concede that Equifax has a practical purpose?

I don't consider arbitrary systems practical. I don't define myself by what Equifax thinks of me, and neither should a bank. Unless a proper, accountable, civil system exists, call it for what it is: Bullshit.

I guess I can just accept that we're using different definitions of some of these words.

Arbitrary again.

To quote Inigo Montoya, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It is arbitrary, why do you think it isn't?

Arbitrary means "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system." Whatever problems you have with credit scores, they are robust predictors of people's likelihood of paying back loans.

Something can be accurate statistically but still be quite bad for those individuals for which it isn't.

Perhaps, but that thing will not be arbitrary.

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