{"id":3818,"date":"2010-10-09T17:02:24","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T00:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josemarquez.com\/xsml\/?p=3818"},"modified":"2010-10-09T17:02:24","modified_gmt":"2010-10-10T00:02:24","slug":"kafkas-the-trial-is-an-orderly-proceeding-compared-to-the-tribulations-of-the-american-poor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2010\/10\/09\/kafkas-the-trial-is-an-orderly-proceeding-compared-to-the-tribulations-of-the-american-poor\/","title":{"rendered":"Kafka’s The Trial is an orderly proceeding compared to the tribulations of the American poor. That’s bad news for the national economy."},"content":{"rendered":"

When you’re poor and you owe money<\/a>, you might find yourself in this situation:<\/p>\n

On another call, Jimmy spoke with a man whose original debt was two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. The man claimed he had already paid another agency nine hundred and eighty-seven dollars to settle the matter. Jimmy didn’t seem surprised by this. When he opened his agency, he worked with a debt broker who \u2013 unbeknownst to Jimmy \u2013 had placed the same debt with several agencies simultaneously. Jimmy likened the situation to street hustlers who sell bootleg versions of a movie. “You don’t know what you have until you start working it,” he said.<\/p>\n

The debtor had nothing in writing to prove that he had settled the debt. “You made, you know, a bad judgment in reference to paying that debt without any sort of written correspondence, Jimmy said firmly. “Pay the actual claim voluntarily or we’re going to process it as a refusal.” After getting off the phone, Jimmy said that collecting the debt was legitimate, but he suggested that the government should better monitor his industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tell me that two different agencies could collect the same debt twice from GE or Blackstone or Goldman Sachs? Exactly. <\/p>\n

American justice may be blind, but that’s of little consequence when the scales are being weighed down<\/a> with bought judges<\/a> and paid off legislators<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It is a pernicious fantasy that we have ever lived in a free market. We have always regulated commercial transactions to ensure not just fairness but also to advance our national interests. <\/p>\n

I’d be happy to debate anyone who would argue that the companies that exploit the poor are growing the pie and\/or fueling economic growth. What value do they create? They’re not even sorting out the market. How are they not simply driving consumers to reduce spending?<\/p>\n

Sheltering such rent-seeking businesses is as productive as what the geniuses in Pyongyang do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you’re poor and you owe money, you might find yourself in this situation: On another call, Jimmy spoke with a man whose original debt was two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. The man claimed he had already paid another agency nine hundred and eighty-seven dollars to settle the matter. Jimmy didn’t seem surprised by this….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,13,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}