Will Capitalism save us?

Hah, pull the other one....

About 25 years ago governments in Canada decided that providing student loans so that less wealthy people could go to university was a Bad Thing. Their solution, of course, was to hand their student loan industry over to capitalists - The Banks.

(This is where I always ask: Tell me about one example of a government service being privatized, and offering the same or better service for less cost. Just one example. Response: <crickets>)

Banks of course couldn’t figure out how to earn maximum returns from skinny little, not yet employed, university students, and quickly jumped ship. And since student loans were no longer important, apparently so too was record-keeping.

It is now 2025, and the amount granted in a new loan to a returning student is reduced to a fraction of what is promised because, allegedly, a loan back around 2000 was overpaid. Or underpaid. Or something. None of these claims are of course true, it’s just that the bank screwed up some record-keeping, and because the loan had been fully paid-off it never reared its ugly head until now.

When told that they were mistaken, and that what they were saying is untrue, the Student Loan people said (I paraphrase) “Show us all of the documents from your previous loan to demonstrate your version of the story, and that the loan was paid off.”

Hands up: everyone who has saved old student loan records from a quarter of a century ago.

Also, this week… one of my clients has switched payments to ramp.com, and I have been working with them to explain that Ramp (as is often the case with US companies) finds it impossible to mail a check to another country. The client never had that problem, but as a public broadcaster, they just laid off their entire staff (but one) when Donald stripped their budget.

So instead of dealing with the very nice mid-Western people who handled payments before, I now will be faced with a bunch of presumably California-based tech gods, none of whom has never lived outside of the US. There was a time when I designed web forms for fundraising and such, and I always managed to sit back, look at my work and ask “So, what if this is my situation, what then?”

And I’ve lived in France, and the US, as well as Canada, and have worked with companies and clients in a half dozen countries. Unlike the California Uber Alles crowd, I understand that other places do things differently, and even if you think they’re wrong, it’s just good manners to accommodate them.

So I sit, and wait, until Ramp.com figures out some probably complex way to avoid sticking two stamps on an envelope to Canada instead of just one to the US.

(Warning signs are always the same: Give us your W-something tax form, and your Social Security Number, and tell us your five digit Zip Code.)

And then there is Fedex…..

I would like to ship a box of books from Vancouver to the UK. I know what Canada Post will charge, but would like a second quote.

The Fedex web-site does offer to arrange a pickup on an international delivery, so I started setting it up.

Step one: The pickup location, and the size and weight - easy.

Step Two: The Destination … uh oh…

Yes, Fedex demands that I tell it which State or Province Cambridge UK is located in.

And needs a Canadian Postal Code.

So I phoned them, and battled my way past idiot chat bots to a live person. Who:

a) REFUSED to even talk to me unless I first gave her my name. First and last.

b) DEMANDED that their web site absolutely worked properly, all the time, and suggested that I was either an idiot, or a liar.

So yes, this week I’m pretty fed up with Capitalism. And thinking that there has to be a better way to do things. Tommy Douglas was right.

(26/07 Many typo fixes.)