I had seen all those ads about credit management companies that claimed to be able to get your credit card interest rates, and in some case your principal, substantially reduced. I spoke with a few, settled on one that seemed more responsible, and then contacted my credit card companies to inquire if they knew of this company and would they recommend it.
Now here is when the surprising thing happened. All but one of the credit card companies, hearing that I might be working with a debt management company, immediately offered to reduce their high interest rates (one reaching 25%) to a more respectable 6%. One credit card company...a major major one...told me "Since your account is current, not in default (as none of my cards were), there is nothing we can do for you. But if you were in arrears, we could automatically reduce your interest rate, perhaps down to 2%."
"So," I said, "your company has it ass backwards. The good guys who pay their bills on time get no deal, the bad guys who are in default get a sweetheart deal." "Right," they said.
The inversion. Where I came from, the good guys were rewarded, the bad guys were not. And it was not just a mathematical thing: companies with good payers were invariably more profitable than the others. It was also a moral thing: those who honored their commitments, their agreements, were perceived of as deserving the better deals for that very reason. The guiding principle was "It is good to be good, bad to be bad".
Not so today. The reverse has taken hold. Those who put out the effort and prosper because of it are made to pay for those who don't. Criminals plea bargain or are given light sentences in some myopic view that that will help them change their ways, and those who obey the law are thus endangered. The drivers who drive at the speed limit are given a finger, the speeder is given a thumb's up. Beating the system, cutting corners, getting away with it, are today's ethical royalty.
That guffaw you hear on the sidelines is Reality laughing. Reality knows that embracing, rewarding, honoring the bad will come back to bite you a thousand times over because, try as hard as he may, man does not have the power to turn bad into good...though he forever tries to do so. The inevitable result of immorality is self-destruction.
So...do you pay your bills on time or do you join the herd?
Ha ha ha ha.
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