loansharks...
I am amused by the comment that came out in the papers today. A member of parliament said that we shouldn't criminalize people who borrow from loansharks as that would only drive loansharking activities further underground. After reading that, I wondered how much thought went through the thought process before he decided to come into the open with that statement.
Loansharking is illegal. The loaning part is anyway. It's like chewing gum. It's illegal to sell it in Singapore. However, you can bring in small quantities for personal consumption. Chewing in public is not illegal either. But disposing it irresponsibly will result in breaking the law.
But what really is wrong with making it illegal to loan from loansharks? If your main concern is for the convenience of policing them, it's not really a strong argument. It's not like legalizing prostitution or gambling. The legalizing of such activities might have helped the government to keep the activities in check. But they only work because the "bad" effects of prostitution and gambling are quite limited to the person who participates in these activities. i.e: The man who visits the prostitute risks getting STD and the man who gambles risks losing his own money. Loansharking is a tad different. There is an after-effect of borrowing, the harassing to repay debt.
And it seems that this is what causing more problems. I mean if all the borrowers were responsible people who repaid their debts on time, the problem of harassing the wrong people would never have arose. Then again, if all the borrowers were responsible people, I doubt they need to borrow money from a loanshark. But that's my opinion.
Also, by keeping borrowing from loansharks legal, it is as much a sign that it is alright to borrow from loansharks. And as long as there are people who are willing to borrow from loansharks and incur high interest rates, there will be people who are willing to lend money to these people. It's all about the theory of demand and supply. In theory, if the government passes a law that makes borrowing from loansharks illegal, then the number of people who would risk going to loansharks would dip. Resulting from this dip, loansharks cannot make enough money from loansharking and they would leave the "industry". This will then lead to a dip in the number of loansharks. In theory it sounds good.
Loansharking is illegal. The loaning part is anyway. It's like chewing gum. It's illegal to sell it in Singapore. However, you can bring in small quantities for personal consumption. Chewing in public is not illegal either. But disposing it irresponsibly will result in breaking the law.
But what really is wrong with making it illegal to loan from loansharks? If your main concern is for the convenience of policing them, it's not really a strong argument. It's not like legalizing prostitution or gambling. The legalizing of such activities might have helped the government to keep the activities in check. But they only work because the "bad" effects of prostitution and gambling are quite limited to the person who participates in these activities. i.e: The man who visits the prostitute risks getting STD and the man who gambles risks losing his own money. Loansharking is a tad different. There is an after-effect of borrowing, the harassing to repay debt.
And it seems that this is what causing more problems. I mean if all the borrowers were responsible people who repaid their debts on time, the problem of harassing the wrong people would never have arose. Then again, if all the borrowers were responsible people, I doubt they need to borrow money from a loanshark. But that's my opinion.
Also, by keeping borrowing from loansharks legal, it is as much a sign that it is alright to borrow from loansharks. And as long as there are people who are willing to borrow from loansharks and incur high interest rates, there will be people who are willing to lend money to these people. It's all about the theory of demand and supply. In theory, if the government passes a law that makes borrowing from loansharks illegal, then the number of people who would risk going to loansharks would dip. Resulting from this dip, loansharks cannot make enough money from loansharking and they would leave the "industry". This will then lead to a dip in the number of loansharks. In theory it sounds good.
posted by alvin_c at 11:44 am
1 Comments:
Because like prostituition, borrowing from loanshark solves the person's immediate problems. Without prostitution and loansharking, people may turn to raping their own daughters and robbery.
But wait, those things do happen!
But we're lowering the risk of third party damage. The client can get STD or get harassed but we keep other people safe.
That's prolly how they see it I guess.
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