Even if you aren't poor, moving frequently or living on the road can cause you all kinds of problems with traditional institutions. So many things in our society rest on an unquestioned assumption that people 'live' in one place and don't move more than once a year and maintain a steady mailing address.
Exactly. My drivers license expired (the fact that could happen was news to me - law change came in after I got it) and I discovered this when trying to rent a small truck to move house. I went to renew it. They wanted 3 months of utility statement for the property I listed as my address. That's all well and good, but I didn't live there yet. I drove without a license for 3 months to meet their requirement. Then to cap it all off, at the appointment to get the license they wanted 2 forms of ID. As my old license had expired it wasn't valid, so I used my 2 passports. They seemed to think having 2 was illegal and called the police. Well done New Zealand Land Transport Authority. It was a pleasure.
Oh, I wouldn't say that's an assumption so much as a premise upon which services etc are offered, because the people who move every week are both a pain to support and not a significant portion of the population.
In other words, all of this is not brought about by myopia, but simple business decisions.
I moved around every month or two during college, because it allowed me to constantly lower my rent in a very expensive area, and saved thousands of dollars. I recently moved to Palo Alto for work, and got in a minor motorcycle accident that left my bike out of commission for several months.
Fully experiencing bay area traffic for the first time, I was pretty annoyed, so I went into 1. my national bank of multiple years, 2. a local credit union, and 3. The dealer itself to try to get a brief loan so I could get a nice sportbike. I make a decent salary, and have been working since I was 13.
Every single financial institution made me fill out my residence history for the past two years, which (on their paper forms) was a several hour process and a huge pain in the ass - why does it matter where I lived when I was eighteen? I'm not sure I remember the names of the people I was living with, much less the landlord's secondary phone number. It seemed especially pointless with my main bank, because they had full historical data on my salary, and knew damn well that I could pay off the loan in full with a month's salary.
Long story short, all of these places denied me for not having lived in the same house for multiple years. I waited a week, got a bonus, and bought one from a different dealer in cash. The next time I need a loan, you can bet I won't be going to any of the companies I visited previously.
It's ridiculous to make financial judgments based on length of residence at an address in 2013 when there's so much more accurate data available (actual income/purchasing data). I think this is a policy that's going to change - many if not most of my highest-earning peers move around frequently to meet needs of the modern job market.
A problem is when those big businesses prevent other smaller businesses from catering to the niche markets, through lobbying or other anti-competitive means.
Then combat the lobbying or other anti-competitive antics. The last time we tried to force business to operate in the wrong market, we told banks to lower their lending criteria and look where that got us.
> we told banks to lower their lending criteria and look where that got us
There's definitely a mix of opinions out there on this, but there have been some good challenges against community lending targets as a significant cause of the crisis.
Wikipedia can sometimes provide a pretty good record on controversial topics with sufficient visibility.
The current article on causes of the US housing bubble, and specifically the section covering loan policy, cites useful literature on both sides. While it's not a completely one-sided argument, it appears the weight of the evidence goes against the CRA and similar government initiatives as a leading cause of the crisis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_United_States_hou...
At the very least, given the number of other sections on that page, you should conclude that the CRA wasn't the sole cause of the crisis.
Note from the same page, (and in some of the above polemics), it seems like there's a similar cry to blame deregulation for the crisis. There are reputable economists, even Bill Clinton claiming that the repeal of Glass-Steagall probably wasn't sufficient to cause the crisis. Regulation and deregulation make suggestively convenient bogeymen for the right and left respectively, so they should draw a sort of heightened scrutiny.
Events like this are naturally complex. Alarm bells should ring if anyone boils down the entire crisis to something so simplistic as "too much or too little government." Some problems and some solutions don't fit conveniently on a postcard.
Businesses serve at the pleasure of their shareholders, and are under obligation to maximize shareholder value. They do not exist to serve whichever customers they feel most affinity towards.
Shareholders aren't always even citizens (can be foreign, can be other businesses).
What if other citizens are prevented from running such business too? Mt Gox almost got shut down because they are competing with the God-given monopoly rights of the banking cartel. The banks do not like to serve the poor but they are also very efficient at getting anybody shutt down who does. Seriously, they are now trying to shut down the entire bitcoin industry, not because it abets drug dealers, but because it would give alternatives to the poor.
I think national governments are not going to feel like rushing to the aid of virtual currencies - from my understanding they have the potential to eradicate tax bases.
There's a very large gap between "moves less than once per year" and "moves every week".
Hell, I'm having trouble keeping a steady place to live because I'm an intern in the Bay Area for 2 months at a time. Housing market is too hot for anyone to have offered rentals even loosely timed to what I needed.
