CREDIT Credit sucks. I feel violated every time someone feels the need to take down my credit information. I want to say, "None of your damned business," to every question they ask me, my social security number, address, how long there, date of birth, employer, personal income, next of kin, yada yada yada. It's none of your damned business. According to an attorney friend of mine, credit is an asset that most people don’t have. In an earlier essay, (entitled "Free"), I took the position that everything should be free, especially the big stuff, like shelter. I know, everyone says the same thing whenever I mention this. It’s kind of like being granted immortality; it would totally zap you of any kind of incentive. Why the hell would you work if everything was free? But maybe the world we’ve created has taken on its present form because of the nature of our work. We’ve created a world of work, a mess that we can’t seem to get out of. It's like a vicious cycle. Why couldn’t we create a world of leisure, for everyone, not just those who are excessively rich? We would have to work to create this world of leisure, to be sure, but if we did it right, we, or at least our posterity, might not have to work again, unless of course they just wanted to, if it were a form of their leisure. And I've got a feeling that they would want to work. They just wouldn't have to. Isaac Asimov envisioned such a scenario in his classic Spacer World science fiction novels, in which there were planets populated by "humaniform" robots, whose numbers far exceeded that of the humans. There were robots for everything, even companionship. I’m talking full-service companionship here. One of the things about the credit world that irks me the most is the way it is sometimes used to evaluate our worthiness to be hired. To make a living, in other words. Imagine. You could actually be turned down for employment on the basis of your credit history. Something about this feels wrong. Why is it not a form of discrimination, discrimination on the basis of a credit report? Why does an employer have the right to discriminate against someone on the basis of their credit history? Who gave them that right? I don't think you should be turned down for credit on the basis of your credit history either. I think you should be able to get credit no matter how awful your credit report is. Whenever someone is looking down their nose at your credit report it's almost like they're telling you that you don't have a right to be here. I want to tell them to go fornicate with themselves whenever they do this. Here's a newsflash: everybody's got a right to be here. That means that everybody has the same right to eat, drink and be merry, no matter what they do to earn a living, no matter what their chosen (or given) profession, no matter how lucky or unlucky they are. They have the right because they were lucky enough to be born into the human family, which, last time I checked was a big bunch of people who all shared the same DNA.
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