“Debt is the Slavery of the Free.”
Publilius Syrus (Roman author, 1st century B.C.).
Why Mass Default?
Mass Default on personal debt will bring about immediate and total freedom from debt for the individual and is an effective form of protest against the banks and the government for the millions of discontented people who wish to see real change to the way the world functions.
Continuing to repay debt validates the current neo-liberal orthodoxy and only serves to keep it in place. The financiers and the financial system that serves them so well are dependent on the belief that people will repay what they borrow. But what if this were to change…
The Mass Default Movement
Traditional protest has proven ineffective and does nothing to harm the banks or financial institutions – they just wave their banknotes at you from their towers while you march on the streets. The only way to make them listen and to bring about a rearrangement of the world order is to target their weak point and the only thing that will make them sit up and take notice: the profit margin.
“Let us unite in our non-payment and have ourselves a mass default revolution.”
Paul Livingson, The Bankruptcy Diaries, 2011
MASS DEFAULT MANIFESTO
Much of the personal debt foisted on people during the easy credit years was a hostile act on the part of the banks and is odious debt. There is no moral obligation to repay this debt.
People should be free and able to live their lives without having their brief time on this planet ruined by those who chase profit for their own personal gain and at the expense of other people’s happiness.
There is no shame to being in debt as the system is set up for you to be carrying enormous liabilities and its survival is dependent on your indebtedness to keep feeding shareholder profits and bankers’ pay packets.
There is no stigma in defaulting. Default should be a purely economic decision, or one based solely on your desire to live; emotions or outdated ethical positions should not come into it and certainly not while the system is so weighted against the individual.
Default is a necessary act, both for personal freedom and as an act of rebellion against the dominance and power of the financial institutions. Mass default will liberate the individual at the same time as undermining the power of the banks.
Who am I to be recommending Mass Default?
I have lived through the dark days of debt and know how a life can be blighted by this scourge of our age. I have also come out the other side by taking the decision to default. I am free from debt and each day I reap the rewards of a life unfettered.
Yet I see a world where millions of debtors remained enslaved to banks who have been bailed-out and have returned to ‘bonuses as usual’, a world of unfairness where the people at the bottom bear the brunt of savage cuts while those at the top suffer no hardship and continue to gain assistance from governments to further increase their wealth.
I do not propose Mass Default from an obscure philosophical position – I promote such action based on very real, first-hand experience. Life without debt is a life worth living. A debt free life can be yours if you want it.
NOW JOIN THE MOVEMENT – SIGN UP TO THIS BLOG USING THE ‘EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION’ FORM IN THE LEFT-HAND MARGIN ON THIS PAGE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW.
I Went Bankrupt 
15 comments
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December 7, 2011 at 12:46 pm
iwentbankrupt
Also check this brilliant article in the Guardian from Jon Witterick at http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/15/debt-agencies-economy
December 8, 2011 at 10:22 am
Greg Schneller
You willingly borrowed the money and took on the debt, -PAY IT BACK!
The people who will be harmed by mass default are those of us who lived within our means, saved money, stayed out of debt, and paid our bills responsibly.
You and your followers are worthless and irresponsible idiots.
December 9, 2011 at 6:44 am
jane
Greg you don’t have to worry about mass default harming your wealth, it is already being stolen everyday, via close to zero interest rates and inflation which is currently at 9%, not the lie of 3.9% the Fed would have you believe.
December 8, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Truthnotparty
HA HA HA HA Greg. You are an idiot!! There are two parties involved in a loan. Interest is charged based on the risk involved. If banks didn’t make worthless loans to people who they knew could not pay them back. They wouldn’t be in trouble. TBTF banks have defaulted on many commercial properties. Morgan Stanley defaulted on a porperty in SF valued over 2 billion.. it is ok for them I guess??? YOU ARE THE IDIOT!
December 8, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Quiet Man
Completely disagree. People sign promissory notes–“I PROMISE to pay”….
But if you think that walking away from your legal and moral responsibility to repay your debt is OK, then, at least, you should return everything you bought with that debt. Clothes, TV, furniture, etc. I guess you get to keep the meals, vacations, etc.
December 8, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Arianwen
Greg, every mortgage has clauses related to foreclosure. With the exception of student loans, every loan document, in the tiny print has similar bankruptcy clauses. The laws these clauses are based on were put in place to prevent Americans from being put into debt slavery. This idea that defaulters are putting responsible people in danger is bogus. Banks are the ones who raise your rates, they are the ones who issue debt. They don’t have to offer you any loans if they choose not to. Telling you that you will pay the debt of a defaulter is just divide and conquer. You and Truthnotparty, both likely 99%’s, will argue over this and the system will continue. I too minimize debt and pay it off quickly. I live within my means and pay my bills on time, so I don’t need bankruptcy atm, but I side with defaulters as this myth of the spendthrift defaulter is bogus. All the traps written into loans these days, all those people with prexisting conditions who are priced out of health insurance, etc. This is where the money goes, not big screen tvs and trips to Aruba. It’s called ‘debt slavery’ for a reason.
December 8, 2011 at 4:12 pm
DTN
We agree. http://www.DebtToNothing.com
December 8, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Larry
I wish people would refrain from calling each other names when posting comments or replys. One of the ways the banksters and the elite win is by keeping the public at odds with one another. We are all doing the best we can to make right financial decisions for our familys. Money is all fiet backed by nothing and only serves to place us hard working individuals into indentured slavery. The banksters have even added compound interest to the money which they are not constitutionally allowed to even print let alone add interest. Jesus threw the bums out when He walked the earth. When you default you default on slavery don’t buy into the I promise to pay stuff so they can quilt trip you, these guys are psychopathic thieves and mobsters they have no conscience. Default, get out from debt and don’t go back.
December 8, 2011 at 5:32 pm
The Walking Debt
Im tired of these arguments on “ethics” of default. Bring back debtors prisons and the whole mess will resolve itself.
December 8, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Draken Korin
REPUDIATE YOUR DEBT.
The momentum grows: DEBTORS REVOLT – intentional *default-en-masse* to hasten the collapse of the predatory lending system and the plutocracy into which our country has morphed.
Join us. Simply refuse to play their game, and repudiate your debts – just walk away. The system, as it has transformed over the past 15 years, is simply rigged against you and offers you NO SEMBLANCE OF FAIR PLAY or mercy. So show no mercy in return; just default. Watch what happens – their power depends upon OUR cooperation, and our continued fear. Reset and rebuild from there.
And stop moralizing… those of you who do, don’t understand how the system has been captured in the last decade, the threat to our future, and are thinking in narrow terms that no longer apply to the current situation.
DEBTORS’ REVOLT — DEFAULT EN MASSE. The Founding Fathers revolted against England over far, far less.
December 9, 2011 at 12:29 am
Jedward
A mortgage is an agreement between two parties, the borrower and the bank and each has protection. You agree to pay the loan but if circumstances arise that makes that impossible or imprudent, then the bank has a built in safety valve, namely taking the property in payment of the loan. It’s that simple. Leverage is used by the banks to try and coerce people into paying up even if it means not being able to put food on the table for your children. It’s a biased and unfair system which needs radical overhaul. Banks walk away from signed business contracts continually and you never hear them being badmouthed and called slackers and good for nothings. Taking control of you life by walking away from a bad deal seems ok for business and banks but not ok for everyone else. Maybe the jail cells ought to be filled up with a few Mazillo’s and not everyday people who are the salt upon which this country was built. It certainly wasn’t built by bankers and wall street types.
December 9, 2011 at 2:57 am
Jerry
I support this message. Default by all means but first borrow every nickel you can to buy GOLD or SILVER, from the banksters of course. Then the next prudent step is to change your W4 status to exempt. That will keep the theves at the IRS completely out of there minds. Make sure you keep those taxes, in cash of course, in a safe place so that you can pay the extortion at the end of the year. Its completely legal. Check it out….
Deprive them of there lifes blood and they will die and good ridence.
INFOWARS lives for ever……
December 11, 2011 at 9:15 am
Markfreedomamendment
“repay what they borrow”
I’m not sure the author understands what debt means in modern finance. Nothing is borrowed. If you take out a mortgage it’s just an agreement to pay, nothing is actually borrowed. Same with student loans or any other type of loan. If you take out a mortgage to buy a house, the sellers bank account is increased by the amount you agreed to pay the bank (minus fees for doing jack shit), that’s all. You owe the bank, and the bank owes the seller. Nothing was borrowed.
December 15, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Defaulted
Five years ago, I defaulted on a £25000 loan with NatWest, and at the same time, on a £5000 overdraft with them too, along with thier £2000 Credit Card, and a £2500 ‘Flexible Loan’ with another bank.
I was earning about £15000 a year at the time, and the debt had got so bad (it started off as a £500 credit card debt and a £4000 loan to buy a car), mostly through aggressive re-selling of my debt to me, so I now feel no sympathy towards the institutions who loaned me more than double my gross salary.
You see, initially, when I stated to struggle with my original loan repayment, I went into the bank to talk to them, and somehow ended up coming out of it, with an £8000 loan – spread over twice as long – and an overdraft facility on my account ‘incase I dipped below zero again’!
The woman behind the desk had convinced me that this was the best course of action – and it went from there.
Of course I couldn’t afford to keep up payments – a simple check of my account would have shown them that – so again, about a year later I had trouble keeping up, but by that time, I’d got a credit card to help pay the bills “guaranteed acceptance!” – which I decided to try and get rid of, as my bank had started advertising ‘consolidation loans’
so this £8000 loan, then stretched to £16000 to encompass my credit card bills, my overdraft AND my original loan, but of course the bank didn’t cancel my overdraft, OR my Credit Card, and the cycle began again, until i ended up in the mess I did.
The banks KNEW it’d happen – the fact the story is told by so many proves it time & time again.
@Quietman – I’d be happy to give them back what I bought with my debt, as nearly all of what I owe was interest on the original £4000 debt – and credit card interest, and overdaft interest, and charges for going over my overdraft.
I was advised by the C.A.B. to pay nothing at all, as the worst they could do was make me bankrupt – and I’m still waiting XD
Since I defaulted, I have had nasty letters for the now resold ‘flexible loan’ & credit card debts – but NatWest has left me alone! I have a feeling that £60 billion of handouts from the goverment has shut them up 😛 (I wonder if defaulted debt was cancelled by the goverment bail-out?)
Anyway, I agree with the sentiment of this blog. Since defaulting, I am a hell of a lot happier. My wages cover my bills, and I have £40 left every week to live on, which is just enough after food to have a few pounds to set aside for buying things.
Remember the old addage;
income £1 – outgoings 99p = happiness.
Income £1 – outgoings £1.01 = misery
Hopefully in a year, my main debt will be statute barred, so they couldn’t get a penny back, even if they do catch up with me.
April 30, 2012 at 10:37 am
iwentbankrupt
Hi everyone, I’ve now moved over to a new website at http://www.iwentbankrupt.com
All of the pages and comments have been migrated over.
Also, check out this post on Household Deleveraging: Why Consumers need to dump their debt for private and public good.
http://www.iwentbankrupt.com/household-deleveraging-why-debtors-need-to-get-with-the-program-and-dump-their-debt-for-both-private-and-public-good/