The People’s Bailout: Occupy is forgiving personal debt

jkottke:

Occupy Wall Street continues to show that it’s more than just a simple protest movement. They have been doing amazing work with Hurricane Sany relief and now there’s Rolling Jubilee. Here’s how Rolling Jubilee works:

OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans, etc.) in order to forgive it. As a test run, we spent $500, which bought $14,000 of distressed debt. We then ERASED THAT DEBT. (If you’re a debt broker, once you own someone’s debt you can do whatever you want with it - traditionally, you hound debtors to their grave trying to collect. We’re playing a different game. A MORE AWESOME GAME.)

This is a simple, powerful way to help folks in need — to free them from heavy debt loads so they can focus on being productive, happy and healthy. As you can see from our test run, the return on investment approaches 30:1. That’s a crazy bargain!

This has my vote for idea of the year. Well, until the debt sellers catch on and either raise the price due to demand or refuse to sell to untrusted brokers.

I can see why sellers might jack up prices (the fourth circle of Hell isn’t going to populate itself, after all), but why would they refuse to sell? Under normal circumstances, the seller wouldn’t have any interest (financial or otherwise) in the disposition of the debt, would they?

49 Notes/ Hide

  1. calligrafiti reblogged this from arliss
  2. arliss reblogged this from ytisonimul
  3. ifyouaretobloom reblogged this from landofthegods
  4. landofthegods reblogged this from kenyatta
  5. beatifical reblogged this from jkottke
  6. emer reblogged this from kthread and added:
    …….wow. This is amazing!
  7. mugfromdoug reblogged this from jkottke
  8. ytisonimul reblogged this from jkottke
  9. iknowyouwillbehappyhere reblogged this from jkottke and added:
    I’ve given the side-eye to OWS in the past about so many things, but this is a fantastic idea.
  10. rickycamilleri reblogged this from jkottke
  11. kenyatta reblogged this from kthread and added:
    Innovation activism at its best.
  12. kthread reblogged this from jkottke and added:
    ________ HERE YOU GO, OCCUPY, HERE YOU GO, WOO WOO.
  13. brad-t reblogged this from jkottke
  14. maxyoder reblogged this from jkottke and added:
    is something I want...do for Christmas. Not...reward those...
  15. gschueler reblogged this from markcoatney
  16. whitneymcn reblogged this from jkottke and added:
    I can see why sellers might jack up prices (the fourth circle of Hell isn’t going to populate itself, after all), but...
  17. markcoatney reblogged this from jkottke
  18. ideasandquotes reblogged this from jkottke and added:
    Woah.
  19. jkottke posted this

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