Red_October

So all available reporting says my credit score went down when I paid off my loans and has remained in this new lower state for months since, but the secret real number used to decide my fate maybe didn’t. Yeah you’re right that’s great. I feel better already.

Get the fuck out of here with that. Credit scores are purely a value used by lenders to determine how much money can be extracted from a consumer. It goes down if you’re delinquent, it goes down it you pay things off early without racking up all the interest they wanted, it goes down if you don’t run enough of a balance on your credit cards. It doesn’t protect consumers, it barely protects lenders, it’s purely used to determine how much can be extracted from a consumer’s bank account.

Immovable Rod: Only one end of the rod is fixed in space, the other end swings freely.

That’s why my credit score went down when I paid off my student loans, right? Get the fuck outta here.

Yes a bad credit score could stop you from having access to things in emergencies, yes it could stop you from having access to things that are important in life, but there are a lot of extra steps and special circumstances that have to occur before a bad credit score is directly responsible for your fridge being empty. Most of those conditions involve simply not having money to access in the first place, and very few of them are going to be as sudden and immediately effective as a freeze on your bank account.

Needing access to financial services to handle a possible emergency is all well and good, but lacking that support structure absolutely pales in comparison to simply being forbidden from conducting commerce of any kind. No emergency needed, savings are irrelevant, the only preparation that could help you is a mattress full of cash and that’s definitely neither a good solution nor a long lasting one. People live their lives every day with bad credit scores, it sucks but it’s doable. Freezing what assets they have would make an immediate and decidedly negative impact well beyond the inability to get a loan. Thinking that credit scores are worse because they’re not a hypothetical future problem is like saying a stubbed toe is worse than getting shot, because you haven’t gotten shot yet.

A bad credit score won’t prevent me from buying groceries.

Yes credit scores are bullshit and the capitalist drive to maximize profit returns that leads to the application of credit scores to all sorts of things is a problem, but you’re delusional if you think credit scores are WORSE than the potential to entirely freeze bank accounts due to political opinions.

Just waiting for them to push this for public schools only. After all, only “the poors” would send their kids to public schools.