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I am no fan of Buy Now, Pay Later 🎁

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As they say, we already know what the next recession will look like. Flooding the market with crappy junk people don’t need and can’t afford but are deceived by the easy-payments of Buy Now, Pay Later.  Stuff that people will later on have to pay for get rid later on. Things often with little value, often with most of the value used up shortly after the product is delivered, and before it’s paid off.  Stuff folks can’t afford and won’t be able to pay back. It just makes me sick.

I have never liked consumer credit for any purpose. If you can’t afford it now, then you shouldn’t go out and buy it. Instead, you should save money, put it away until you have the money to buy it. Don’t take advantage of zero percent financing, but instead take advantage of the interest you can get from FDIC-insured savings accounts, especially the higher-interest online accounts. And when you take your time, you can reconsider how essential the purpose really is.

There are a lot of people out there who are legitimately poor. I get it, I grew up that way too. But I also have always rejected credit — if I can’t afford something, I won’t buy it. If there is something I really want, then I will wait until I have enough money saved up to buy it. Time to consider the product more carefully before purchasing. And I have always learned to live with less, even if at times it’s less comfortable.

Dark Age Ahead

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I read this Jane Jacobs book a few years back. I am starting to think she is right about the decay and rot that is creeping into contemporary society.

The following is a summary of Jacobs’ description of the decay in each area.

Community and Family
 People are increasingly choosing consumerism over family welfare, that is: consumption over fertility; debt over family budget discipline; fiscal advantage to oneself at the expense of community welfare.

Higher Education
Universities are more interested in credentials than providing high quality education.

Bad Science
Elevation of economics as the main “science” to consider in making major political decisions.

Bad Government
Governments are more interested in deep-pocket interest groups than the welfare of the population.

Bad Culture
A culture that prevents people from understanding the deterioration of fundamental physical resources on which the entire community depends.

But then again, if was sitting in the same seat in fifty years ago, the decay probably would have looked even worse — things weren’t exactly looking up when you looked out in the window of the world in 1969 with the Vietnam War underway, crime and inflation creeping in, and the wheels just about ready to come off the economy as the world plunged into the 1970s.

And she makes a still very valid point when it comes to ideology:

Overall, Jacobs argued that the very concept of “ideology” is fundamentally flawed and detrimental to both individuals and societies, no matter what side of the political spectrum an ideology comes from. By relying on ideals, she claimed people become unable to think and evaluate problems and solutions by themselves, but simply fall back on their beliefs for “pre-fabricated answers” to any problem they encounter.