Secondary forces of debt

• Whenever Bob owes Alice, then Alice has reason to look after Bob, to the extent that increases the chance he satisfies the debt.
• Yet at the same time, Bob has an incentive for Alice to disappear, insofar as it would relieve him.

This is a case where you shouldn't oversimplify then extrapolate from the over-simple model.  In most real-world formal debts, disappearance of the debtor or creditor does not void the debt.  If Bob disappears, Alice collects from Bob's estate.  If Alice disappears, Alice's heirs collect from Bob.  In cases where collection is uncertain, the terms of the debt are generally worse, so the lender is paid for the risk they're taking.  In many other cases, the debt is informal and not seriously enforceable, so disappearance isn't necessary, just unwillingness/inability to pay.

And you CERTAINLY shouldn't try to reason from a book about an instance of an extremely formalized and evolved set of laws and agreements that are already far from generality about debt.  The story is interesting, but doesn't tell you much about other forms of debt.

1. Historically European Jews were money lenders since Christians were forbidden to charge interest. This was one of the major forces behind the pogroms, since killing the debt holders saved you having to pay up.

2. On a country level scale this is significant. If you live in a dangerous area, you want the USA to have invested a lot of money in you which they will lose if you ever are conquered.

3. People claiming that debts are inherited by the estate: this only applies to formal, legible debts. If you lend money informally (possibly because there's a criminal element involved), or the debt is an informal obligation to provide services/respect then once the debt holder dies it's often gone.

4. Even for many types of legible debt, once the debt holder dies it's very difficult for the estate to know the debt exists or it's status. If old Joey Richbanks lends me 10 million dollars, witnessed and signed in a contract, who says his children are ever going to find the contract? And if they do, and I claim I already paid it, how certain are they I'm lying? And how likely are they to win the court case if so?

There is a saying that if you lend money to a friend, you are likely to lose both the money and the friend.

I think the second point is a bit problematic. That might depend on the type of debt you're considering. But limiting my comment to purely financial, and especially documented, debt then I don't think Bob has any actual incentive here. Why? Even if Alice is removed the ownership of the loan and the right to repayment transfer to the estate and heirs. So Bob's position doesn't change.

Commonly encapsulated as "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."

Epistemic status: riffing, not sure if these secondary forces of debt are at play much

If A has many different debts to B and B many different debts to A, such that it's not trivially easy to figure out who owes who more, perhaps self-serving bias will lead each to believe they have a net balance in their favour and create overall more allyship.

Another thought: these effects seem to most disfavour delimited debts. I might be relieved if my friend's project falls apart, but I wouldn't be if they dropped dead. So if my debt is not limited to their project, then my dislike of the debt is set against all of my like of them as a person, and is more likely to come out clearly lacking, rather than just against their project, which I perhaps don't care much about (and similarly with the airport debt). 

Reading this gave me an uncomfortable moment considering my feelings for all the people who expect things of me or of whom I expect things, outside the specific context of debt.

It makes me think of the very common case in society of someone taking care of an elderly or otherwise care-needing relative.

But like @Dagon [LW · GW] says, this is only one aspect of such interpersonal relationships, out of many. In particular, taking this "as reason to avoid debt in all its forms more" sounds to me like hoping never to get in a situation which in fact happens all the time. It would be throwing a lot of human interactions out with the bathwater.

I think one could consider it a part of mental health to be able to make commitments without resenting it, and to manage situations in which such resentment arises.

wow.  I only read the first 3 lines, and I already predict 5% this will have been profoundly usefwl to me a year from now (50% that it's mildly usefwl, which is still a high bar for things I've read).  among top 10 things I've learned this year, and I've learned a lot!

meta: how on earth was this surprising to me?  I thought I was good at knowing the dynamics of social stuff, but for some reason I haven't looked in this direction at all.  hmm.