The power of federal legislative authority over commerce that was once used to halt the state labor law child labor race to the bottom will be used here to deny a fresh start to poor folks who use credit cards. Perpetual poverty, in a scheme that merely becomes even more disproportionate in its consequences over time, is the hallmark of the design of a company store. That darned thing called a fresh start just gets in the way.

So long as a corporation can file for bankruptcy protection and the owners' exposure is limited to their investment an individual must be able to limit their exposure to bargaining themselves into slavery. The difference in treatment of an individual with that of a corporation should pose an instant obstacle to the proposed legislation because the bargaining parties lack mutuality.

If a laborer is merely an economic creature then one could assume then that the purchase of food with a credit card is just a bland input cost for the goal of sustaining life one more day for the sole purpose of performing some economic task tomorrow, on behalf of another and for that other persons' greater gain. Even if a human were treated as just that crass and limited economic creature then they should be no less able to escape the consequences of bad decisions as the company store operator. Tomorrow, when it comes, is a new day for the corporation . . . so too must it be for common man.

Capitalism is after all, the economic theory, for the greater good of us all. It is not supposed to be an alternative name for serfdom.

Instapundit notes this round of efforts by the big credit cards companies to purge bankruptcy from the options available to mere individuals, thus striking out that portion of the US Constitution intended to protect against rather than facilitate abuses.