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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

So you argue that it is O.K. to game the bank and live a lavish life destroying your own way of living and if the bank catches up and wants you to take measures so you can pay back, the right thing to do would be to jail the people who were gamed or conspired with the people who gamed the bank and simply continue the lavish life and let the people who dod not manage to game the bank(some richer and some poorer than you) keep writing checks to you so you can sustain the lifestyle you achieved by gaming the bank?

Do I get this correct?

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No. The point you are missing is that it is also not ok for the lender to lend everyone a billion dollars, wait for people to default, and then go ask the government to give them a billion dollars back because otherwise they will go bankrupt.

If the supply of money has essentially been exhausted, then both borrowers and lenders have been doing something wrong, and it should be BOTH that suffer, so that both are incentivized not to resch this point again. What happened in Greece instead was that only the borrowers suffered, the lenders got all their money back.

> What happened in Greece instead was that only the borrowers suffered, the lenders got all their money back.

Even worse, it'll be the borrower's children who will suffer the consequences.

No, I don't miss that point. Some people should definitely go to jail.

But what is the solution here? Be really angry to the lenders and make them keep writing checks to the fraudulent borrowers?

The lenders actually suffered approximately a 30% haircut on long-term Greek bonds.

I think you do get this correct. It is the bank's responsibility to assign its loans properly. That's the risk they take and why they get to collect an interest. Maybe watch this video of David Graeber from start until 5:20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs He makes the point more clearly.

I mean, do I get this correct? Would you say that when people need to pay their debts, the bank gets to enforce measures despite it causing the debtor's children dying (i.e. increased child mortality)?

I might have gotten you wrong here. It is not easy to parse a 100+ word sentence.

There are numerous studies about the positive effects of being rich and have the easy life, including studies showing that the richer you are the lesser child mortality you get.

You can argue that if that money was not given in first place is just as bad as asking it back.

I am sure the poorer EU countries would also lower their mortality rates if they were given the free check. What's special about Greece, why Romanians can't lower their mortality rates by living a good life on credit? Why the UK can't do that?

They both have higher child mortality rates than Greece: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/data/euro...

Are they not clever enough? Not important enough? What's going on here?

Your argument is that those children in Greece deserved to die because children in Romania are dying too? I am not convinced by that argument.

What is going on here is that debt in the current financial system is at conflict with current moral standards. Debt is being transferred from parents to children (mostly in the form of state debt), while defaults are being pushed almost exclusively on the the debtor from the debtee. The consequence is that there are a lot of people being punished for events outside of their control.

Yeah, when a debt cannot be filled, debtor and debtee need to share the consequences proportionally. And in the case of Greece, the 30% haircut is not remotely proportional.

No they don’t deserve to die but let’s have a system where children all over the world are taken care of, not only those whose parents can game the creditors.

also “Think of the children” argument should stop being abused.

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