rahve dearest, this is one hell (.) of a good wish, but it ain't easy to fulfill. my personal take on the "pay their bill" issue is: either one consciously decides to resort to violence, or bills don't get paid. resorting to violence has some sorry drawbacks, mainly on one's criminal record, and therefore career, social interactions, peace of mind, not to mention the pain that a convicted person brings to the very few who actually love them.
this makes me think that it will be a long way before any bill gets paid: either one of us reaches impunity, which in our current democratic system is not easy (and i will even state that i support a society where impunity is limited, even if this damages my interest), or the bucket stops when we start worrying about going to jail or getting ourselves and our friends in trouble.
and why exactly is this? because people who should pay their bills are able, like almost everyone except us, to build a safe net around them and be convinced that they are perfectly decent people, with some measure of success, and some measure of ability to get results, both emotional and otherwise. the fact that they might be, for instance, popping antidepressants does not change anything: you will never be able to proof that they're a living ruin on that basis.
after all, we live in an affluent part of the world, and no matter how much someone screws up they won't face the consequences like they would in some other places. they'll still have a job, buy food, clothes, and entertainment; we'll still do the same, sometimes less, sometimes more, and our only satisfaction will be that at least our survival instinct doesn't need to operate via the creation of nonexistant worlds.
people bounce, those people bounce, and those who really end on the welfare roll are often, if i understand correctly, more deserving than the average bouncer. and we just know this kind, because, again, we've looked around us in a radius that is not extremely small, nor extremely large... and this does not include people who would really suffer dire consequences for their mistakes.
the only hope we have for the bill-paying option concerns their likelihood to have violent run-ins with the law. the moment they do something that is not only demented but illegal also we can, figuratively speaking, call the police to move their car, and we'll laugh (and they will kneel, and know this heart of steel was too hard to bu, too hard to bu). what we can do is bait them, all the while being careful of not being killed by the machine we set in motion, seeing how baiting people to commit crimes is a crime itself. personally, i find this option too much work, i'd rather watch a movie.
but rest assured, there's no real payback unless something illegal, on the part of any of the parties involved, happens. all the rest is figment of the imagination. another option would be financial ruin, but this is something that at the moment we can not enforce, and when we will be able to enforce it these people will have dependent kids or dependent old parents and i know that this would stop me anytime.
it's a catch 22. what a sorry conclusion to come to.
h
