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@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 2 hours ago

It may strike you as weird, but lenders *love* lending to poor people who will have trouble paying them back Obviously, lenders want to be repaid, and the more money you have, the easier it is to settle your debts, but (paradoxically) if you have a lot of money, you expect to pay *less* to borrow.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/25/cruel-cruelty-oh-cruelty/#digital-arm-breakers

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A 19th century engraving of a family being evicted from their tenement. The family stands, miserable, on the sidewalk, watched over by cops and their curious neighbors, as baliffs carry their worldly goods out of their former home. The image has been altered. It has been tinted sepia. The Apple 'Think Different' wordmark has been matted into the top of the scene. The trunk the baliffs are carrying has been replaced with a blocky Mac SE/30.

https://pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: Apple's robo-repo (25 Jul 2026)

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

This devaluation can also occur when your house's value plummets because Elon Musk repeatedly bombs your neighborhood with flaming rocket debris, or when your Tesla's resale value collapses after Musk throws a string of Seig Heils on national television.

The point being that risk mitigation is never risk *elimination*, but markets have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Partly that's because of risk *shifting*.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

A lender who can "securitize" their loans (turn them into bonds and sell them off to investors) can insulate themselves from risk, because the people who buy the bonds are now carrying that risk.

So many of our crises come from the intersection of these two phenomena: the promise of reducing loan risks without losing the risk premium *and* the fact that risk reduction can fail suddenly (or be revealed as nothing more than risk-shifting).

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

The first phenomenon creates vast credit bubbles, the second one pops them.

This leaves would-be usurers on an endless quest for new ways to lend money at a premium to poor people while reducing their own risk. You don't need technology to do this - all you need is a captive audience of broke people whom other lenders won't touch.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

When the US government adopted the racist practice of "redlining" (denying government-backed loans to Black borrowers), they created a market for predatory pseudo-mortgages called "contract buying." Contract buying is like a mortgage, but without the equity: miss a payment and you get evicted, and you aren't entitled to any of the sale price of the house, even if it was 99.99% paid off when you got kicked out.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

Lenders can tip the scales in their favor by making up arbitrary junk fees, and a smart lender waits until the house is almost paid off before whacking the borrower with a ton of these fees. The borrower misses a payment, the seller repossesses the house and sells it again:

https://ippsr.msu.edu/public-policy/michigan-wonk-blog/re-emergence-contract-buying-practice-rooted-mid-20th-century

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The Re-Emergence of Contract Buying: A Practice Rooted in Mid-20th Century Racism | Institute for Public Policy and Social ResearchMichigan State University IPPSR addressMichigan State University IPPSR phone number

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

Contract lending never went away. Wherever you find a desperate, disfavored group who are locked out of the credit system, you'll find scumbag contract lenders running this scam. Take long-haul truckers, among the most exploited workforce in America.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

Long before Uber made worker misclassification (treating an employee as an independent contractor) mainstream, the trucking industry was effectively indenturing truckers, exerting *more* control over their lives than a boss could ever impose on a waged worker, while disclaiming any employer-related responsibilities. Truckers don't get health insurance or sick leave - and they don't get paid if they have to sit at a port for 20 hours waiting to pick up a load.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

But the exploitation of truckers doesn't stop with mere wage theft. Truckers also "contract buy" their trucks. Their bosses issue loans that let drivers buy their trucks on terms that allow the company to repo the truck after a single missed payment.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

And of course, bosses have total control over truckers' wages, so a canny boss can wait until a truck is nearly paid off and then stop the driver's wages, forcing them to miss a payment and lose their truck, which can be sold on to the next victim:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170616120011/https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/news/rigged-forced-into-debt-worked-past-exhaustion-left-with-nothing/

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USA TODAY

Rigged. Forced into debt. Worked past exhaustion. Left with nothing.

Thousands of drivers work up to 20 hours a day, sometimes for pennies. When they get sick or refuse to keep working, trucking companies fire them and take their trucks – along with thousands they have paid toward buying them

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

Subprime auto-loans bring this same profitable arrangement to regular drivers who just need a car to commute, pick up groceries, and shuttle the kids to and from school. A subprime auto-loan often contains the "teaser" and "balloon" rates at the heart of the subprime mortgage bubble: for the first year or two, your car payments are affordable, but then they shoot up to a sum that you can't possibly pay.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

The lender then repossesses your car, zeroing out your equity, and sells it to another victim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

But the subprime car industry puts a decidedly modern spin on the contract lending scam that has been used to profitably rob so many Black home borrowers and long-haul truckers. Subprime lending's risk-reduction relies on repossession.

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Dovremmo andarcene tutti da YouTube? Con Kenobit (Fabio Bortolotti)

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

A subprime car lender doesn't just get rich by charging poor borrowers more money that rich borrowers for shittier, older cars. Subprime car dealers *repeatedly* "sell" that car to many, many poor people, on conditions that all but guarantee that the borrower will default on their loan and lose their car.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

This is where tech comes in. Ubiquitous digital networks and computing make it *much* easier to repo a car. This started with the humble lo-jack, a simple tracker marketed as a way to locate lost or stolen cars. Subprime auto-lenders were early and aggressive lo-jack adopters, because you can't repo a car if you don't know where it is.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

Installing a lo-jack is much cheaper than paying repo men to drive around looking for the cars you want to claw back, which means that you can sell cars to people who represent worse credit risks, charging a higher risk premium, and still find the car when those high interest rates force your borrower into default.

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Cory Doctorow

@pluralistic@mamot.fr · activity timestamp 1 hour ago

The next wave of automotive usury-tech was a kind of systematic exploration of the entire space between a car that is repossessed and a car that isn't. Some subprime cars are fitted with an extra stereo system that can only be controlled by the borrower over a wireless connection. Miss a payment and this secondary stereo turns itself on and starts playing earsplitting threats about what will happen to you if you don't pay up. The only way to turn it off is to make the payment.

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