I Blame the Internet

In the midst the greatest credit crisis in history, I’ve done something
really stupid – I went out and got myself a credit card.
How could I be so naïve? What compelled me to enter into a world I
had spent the better part of my adult life avoiding? And why now, when
the ship is about to sink, did I buy myself a first class ticket?
There is one simple answer: the Internet.
There are over 74-million credit cards in Canada – that’s more than
two for every adult over the age of 18. Canadians owed over $800
billion in credit card debt and are paying $22 billion in interest
rates every year. We use our little plastic cards to buy everything
from groceries, to clothing, to electronics and videogames. But
nowhere does the credit card dominate more than online.
You can buy almost everything online – t-shirts, CDs, porno videos,
books, even groceries that get delivered to your door within the hour.
But there is a catch – they won’t accept cash. And, more often than
not, the only form of money they do accept comes in the form of a
16-digit credit card number.
Since an early age, I have avoided the world of credit cards, the stock
market, and anything to do with banking besides my checking account.
While my some of friends were investing in RSPS and Mutual Funds, and were
religiously following the ebb and flow of commodity prices, I was still
wondering what those ominous acronyms stood for. I knew nothing about the
complicated world of Wall Street. I knew that there was some sort of
correlation between real money and those numbers and indexes you see on
the news, but I couldn’t figure it out. The Dow Jones Industrial, TSX,
Enron – these things meant nothing to me. Was Wall Street even a real
street? And what the hell were all those guys in those bright coloured
vests yelling about? Honestly, the details are still fuzzy.
As I got older I tended to disguise this ignorance by claiming a conscious
objection to credit world. I was a financial anarchist. I was going to
live my life under the radar. No mortgage, no credit rating, no stock
market, no loans – nothing that would associate me with the man. But
eventually, the man managed to suck me in through my computer screen.
I was never one of those crazy online shoppers. I don’t have an eBay
account. I don’t order the latest New York fashions from an online
boutique. I don’t seek out obscure records from obscure labels in
Austria. Until last week, the only “products” I ever got online I got
illegally by downloading them. Ironically, downloading illegally is what
pushed me to get a credit card.
Since torrent sites have essentially replaced most other peer-to-peer
software like LimeWire and Kazzaa, it is getting even harder to find
relatively obscure music. I am part of few invite only networks, but even
then finding entire spoken word poetry albums can be difficult. Apple’s
iTunes is kick ass for this kind of stuff, but the only way you can open
an account is with a credit card. Similarly, I was getting really into
eBooks and while you can find some on torrent sites, hyper nerdy sci-fi
collections or open-source textbooks dominate the selection. There was
none of the literature I was looking for – no Philip Roth, no Leo Tolstoy,
no Saul Bellow. The only way to get these books was to pay for them on
sites like Amazon.com. And, like iTunes, the only way you can order them
is with a credit card. This was the straw that broke my conscious credit
objector back. And so, with much reluctance, I filled out an online form
and got myself a credit card.
There are many factors contributing to the current financial crisis.
Among other things, bad bank loans and mortgages, poor government
oversight, and a faltering manufacturing sector have lead most of the
world’s major economies into recession. But at least part of the blame
for this credit crunch has to be shouldered consumer, as relates directly
to the massive increases in personal debt.
Since the mid-80s, credit card debt in Canada has more than tripled. As a
nation, we are spending more and going more and more into debt. This is
due at least in part to increased online spending.
There are other ways of paying online, such as PayPal – which can be set
up to take money right out of your bank account – but at the most popular
online stores like Amazon and iTunes, the card dominates. This is just
another step in making our purchases more abstract and less real. Not
only are we spending money we haven’t earned yet, we are spending in this
fantastical, consequence-free world that is the Internet. This kind of
thinking is fuelling our debt culture.
So far I’ve only spent $20 on my card. Both purchases were online. To
resist the temptation to spend, I keep the card in my desk drawer at home
and don’t bring it with me in my wallet when I leave the house. But every
time I see an online ad, or am offered a membership to some pay-only site,
or I see that Kanye West has a new remix album, I know that I have to the
power to purchase, but also the potential to go seriously into debt.