How much punishment should be given to those with mental illnesses and low financial capability

The latter I've blogged about previously as something which might one day be pathologised. In a society where systems are set up to advantage those with high financial capability and punish those who have low financial capability or suffer from a recognised mental illness with financial and social esxclusion there is an argument for the protection of those with low financial capability.

What I mean is something which I'm thinking about after a complaint I made to a mobile phone company recently.

For several years I've been punished through having a bad credit record. I don't have particularly bad financial capability. I have bipolar. Spending sprees and decisions made while feeling suicidal have cost me my credit history.

I can't get a mortgage. At least for a good few years and it'll be at a high interest rate. I can't get contract mobile phones or even monthly sims. Instead I am forced to use pay as you go, an expensive option which no one would take if they use a mobile phone to talk. People who don't talk much or can learn not to talk much on their mobile use pay as you go. Often the latter are people forced into the situation through financial exclusion, the punishment of bad debt.

I tried to open a charity bank account last year. I couldn't. I was lied to then my poor credit history and refused charity account were publically spoken about in a small bank. I think the latter was discrimination. I had revealed I was schizoaffective. The bank person may not have felt comfortable giving me bad news in private in one of the rooms like I was in when I went through the application.

Anyway, I remember chatting to someone when I worked at a mental health charity. He was so happy with his contract but it was exploutative. A sales person have given him a pitch he didn't understand. His low financial capability, like that of many others, is exploited by an industry which offers products the designers of wouldn't use.

For example loans at ultra high interest rates. Or confusing pricing.

Few companies have this sort of integrity. For example the mobile phone company might have considered how their pricing was exploitative if their staff used other networks (assuming they didn't get discounted tariffs which some don't because they're hired from agencies). The company I complained to allows another company to resell their network capacity at half the cost to the customer. The company also markets how its products help people to connect.

Anyway, there are lots of forms the disability of mental illness can be seen. There are lots of people who fit similar paradigms of disability because of the nature of the credit system which, strangely, values those with a little bit of poor financial capability or mental illness...because those are the people who get fined. Their punsihment is profit for shareholders.

Those who fuck up really badly have an even worse punishment. The prison of poverty. This is the expectation of the system.

For years I've battled bad debt and the effects. As well as all the other shit that comes with mental illness.

I get to wallow in a bit of self pity. There are others like me who go through worse.