• as a larger and larger portion of americans are discovering, without a whole shitload of well paid idiots out there, buying new cars every 3-5 years, the used market contracts significantly.

          and now that it’s obvious EVs are the future for individual transport, rational people started hanging on longer than average to their existing combustion car to wait for the used/affordable EV market to materialize.

          the used car market is now so squeezed, used car prices can be decoupled from reality just because people still need a car in this car dependent shithole.

          add in the broader unstable economic outlook and nobody wants to make any large purchases unless they absolutely half to, so all the dealerships can do to juice sales is start issuing insane loans with horrible terms to the biggest broke idiots they can find to try and move the needle until the next quarter, when they assume the slump will be over.

          its a perfect storm of how capitalism turns anything into a highly profitable* disaster (* assuming the feds come in and underwrite the insane risk).

      • whogivesashit@lemmygrad.ml
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        29 days ago

        Yeah buying used is only viable if you can actually do all of the maintenance required. Not really an option for most people so car ownership just becomes another place to fall into debt forever.

  • segfault11 [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    29 days ago

    teenager goes into debt because they were pressured to go to college their entire life: play stupid games, win stupid prizes smuglord very-intelligent

    fellow hog goes into debt wasting money on a Ford F-420: robbery! ooooooooooooooh

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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    29 days ago

    That is over 7 times my car payment.

    With that kinda car payment I could pay down in 3 months.

    You could buy a shitty beater one month, a different one the next month, then alternate between them while covering repairs for the other for basically the same payment each month.

  • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    29 days ago

    If not this, what exactly do they think financing is?

    This is the entire fucking basis of their entire worldview. Actuarial data regarding ROIs and interest is the entire shtick. To them there should be nothing else that is important, nothing else should be considered sacred or important besides the APR generating a profit. Otherwise that’s a compulsion to care about something and you would have to be like a jedi resisting the urge to be seduced by the dark side. Max Steiner Stirner would spit on your grave if you thought that this is anything but the most holy of civil interactions.

    • I’m not sure this answer is universal, but based on the one I’m unfortunately related to and have to talk to from time to time, libertarians would say that regulation is preventing other truck manufacturers from entering and competing in the market. If the market were “truly” free, then a competitor could come along and do better by selling their vehicles at a lower interest rate, taking all the business away from the interest-rate-abusing company. If you try to explain that this problem is not due to regulation but due to a lack of it, or how trusts happen and how monopolies work, they will fall back on the same set of naive circular reasoning. It doesn’t have to make sense or reflect reality, it just has to vaguely sound plausible and fit with what they want to be true.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        29 days ago

        That’s such obvious nonsense though lol he doesn’t have to buy this truck with the financing, there are other options already! It exists for market reasons.

      • segfault11 [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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        29 days ago

        the amount of mental gymnastics and extrapolating they go through to explain something backwards from the conclusion “regulation is universally bad” is astounding. i knew a guy who said that seatbelt regulations actively make cars less safe. when i asked him to explain, he said that it prevents car manufacturers from inventing new, potentially more effective safety mechanisms that might get in the way of seatbelts. when i asked him if he knew of any better alternatives to seatbelts that were being hindered by seatbelt regulations, he basically said “idk, but i have faith that the free market will come up with something.”

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    29 days ago

    Nothing grinds my gears more than the willful stupidity of libertarians. They claim to be the true acolytes of capitalism but they can never prove it by dazzling us with their huge wealths and power. They’re never some captain of industry it’s some fucking small business owner. Krill. They’re fucking krill waiting to be gobbled up by the bigger fish. Look at this fuckwit getting fucked by the market, by usury, a concept as older than the Iron Age. This fucking brain chump probably thinks he’s a better businessman than Bill Gates because he knows Bill Gates only got rich through evil “fake capitalism.” In the real world if this guy were to ever become a vague challenge to Gates’ wealth the vast systems corrupted by capital: state, banking, telecom, etc, would conspire to stomp this ant deep into the dirt. This impotent caterwauling is all they’re good for.

  • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
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    29 days ago

    I would call it voluntarily getting robbed. They weren’t held at gun point to sign this, or get a truck they can’t actually afford. Options exist (even if many aren’t great), this certainly was a choice made for a reason I can’t figure out.

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      29 days ago

      An extremely expensive truck is a bad example usually, but this idea of things being “voluntary” is a core myth of capitalism. There are many times where, in a person’s estimation, they need something but can’t buy it and therefore need to use one of these plans, and are in effect punished for it by paying a massive amount extra. Fundamentally, it’s a coerced choice, but the coercion is being carried out by the rest of society (sometimes with lobbying from the company offering the payment plan).

      There’s also the fact that education on finance is very poor and frequently the idea of genuine informed consent needs to be questioned, but it extends beyond the legal liability of these companies, so they are free to abuse it.

      • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
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        29 days ago

        I fully agree with your generalized version, but I was specifically taking about this exact case: The photo seems to be of a document that very neatly and clearly summarizes the involved costs (and the effective price for the fact that it’s a loan being about 50k$). So I’m assuming here that during the negotiating or signing of the contract/loan, this information or document is available. Then I really don’t buy the education argument (again in this specific case).

        This is a truck costing 110k$, leading to payments of 1.8k$ per month. It’s about the relative value, too. From my frame of reference it’s just a (big) car and costs about a third of what is expect a house to cost, if it isn’t in a city (suburban to rural), which obviously might be very different in the US. This is very much a luxury or vanity item, at least to me. Even for a monthly mortgage payment for a house I wouldn’t go much higher than the rate they are accepting to pay for a car.

        • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          29 days ago

          Yeah, I somewhat agree on the truck not because the financing isn’t predatory but because this plainly seems like a luxury item, as you say. It should still be illegal to engage in such drastic usury, but I don’t find it a compelling case.

      • combat_brandonism [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        29 days ago

        Even in this case! Financing a six figure depreciating asset with $0 down is absolutely predatory behavior. Loan shark shit but you’ve got the backing of the state monopoly on violence.

        • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          29 days ago

          The reason I was avoiding this case is that it seems, in effect, like very transparent overpricing on a luxury item, but I agree with you that it should still be illegal.