> So your argument is that because the credit reporting companies may raise prices as a result of being sued for their bad actions we should prohibit anyone from suing them and allow them to operate with out any legal liability.
Nope. My argument is we need to account for the costs of this when we decide if having arbitration ban is a good thing or not. It's not "evil fatcats want no responsibility for their greed, let's stop them!", it's "we have two setups here, with complex cost structure, before we decide which one we are going with, we need to carefully weigh the costs of each, not dismissing any of them because it makes us feel bad and not using unicorn-land economics that says everything that makes one feel bad doesn't really exist". My point is not one is better than the other - I didn't do the work to know that - my point is you have to do the work to know it. Wishing well is not enough, unlike fairy tales, in the economics it's not enough to be pure of heart, you also have to have math and data on your side.
> Really? That is your position
No, not really, you can stop strawmanning now, before you caused local straw shortage and the costs of straw skyrocket.
> but if I want meaningful access I have to pay them a monthly fee to access my own data.
I know right now about half-dozen of absolutely free ways of getting credit reports and scores. I didn't look for them that hard, I was told about them by companies' marketing, banners, mails (both paper and electronic), etc. Discover, American Express, Barclay, CreditKarma, Mint, Citi. Everybody is doing it now. I am sure if I look harder, I can find even more free offers. Surely, the paid ones could have slightly better UI and maybe a couple of added-value services like insurance and notifications and stuff, but bare access to data has been free for a while, if you spend 10 minutes on research.
> This data breach should mean Equifax as a company is dissolved,
So instead of 3-way oligopoly you have 2-way oligopoly. That surely will fix things.
Nope. My argument is we need to account for the costs of this when we decide if having arbitration ban is a good thing or not. It's not "evil fatcats want no responsibility for their greed, let's stop them!", it's "we have two setups here, with complex cost structure, before we decide which one we are going with, we need to carefully weigh the costs of each, not dismissing any of them because it makes us feel bad and not using unicorn-land economics that says everything that makes one feel bad doesn't really exist". My point is not one is better than the other - I didn't do the work to know that - my point is you have to do the work to know it. Wishing well is not enough, unlike fairy tales, in the economics it's not enough to be pure of heart, you also have to have math and data on your side.
> Really? That is your position
No, not really, you can stop strawmanning now, before you caused local straw shortage and the costs of straw skyrocket.
> but if I want meaningful access I have to pay them a monthly fee to access my own data.
I know right now about half-dozen of absolutely free ways of getting credit reports and scores. I didn't look for them that hard, I was told about them by companies' marketing, banners, mails (both paper and electronic), etc. Discover, American Express, Barclay, CreditKarma, Mint, Citi. Everybody is doing it now. I am sure if I look harder, I can find even more free offers. Surely, the paid ones could have slightly better UI and maybe a couple of added-value services like insurance and notifications and stuff, but bare access to data has been free for a while, if you spend 10 minutes on research.
> This data breach should mean Equifax as a company is dissolved,
So instead of 3-way oligopoly you have 2-way oligopoly. That surely will fix things.