It is the common and, for some, so very morally upright, to castigate people for not being proof against practiced, refined methods specifically designed to take advantage of them. Payday lending in the US or doorstep lending in the UK is exactly that.

These people are practiced. They have built strategies on exactly how to get the most out of disadvantaged people: the poor with payday lenders, addictive personalities with casinos or mobile games, all of it. They have bigger guns and much, much more data about how to aim--but John Q. Public is supposed to be able to ward all of it off?

Here's an example. Here in Massachusetts we're plagued with scumbags who want you to sign up for an "alternative energy provider" or whatever. Still uses your normal electric company but they "source the power" from a company you select. "It's green," they cry! "It's cheaper," they cry! Of course, what they don't tell you, as they literally knock on your door and fast-talk you, as they imply-but-don't-say that they're from your actual power company, into signing up. Then they jack your rates a few months later, expecting you to not notice, because the bill comes from National Grid anyway. And there's also a big cancellation fee after 48 hours, too, so they get you that way too.

The reason I know about these bastards is because one day, a little confused, a little hungover, and not wanting to look stupid, I got suckered by these assholes. Some dude knocked on my door, was super duper friendly, and explained his upsides and not his downsides; sure, this sounds fine, I'll sign up. Was it stupid? Yeah, it really was. But hey, I messed up. It happens to everyone. For me, the risk is pretty small. It would've been twenty, forty, sixty bucks extra a month. But I'm in tech! I might not have noticed. What about the barely-speaks-English immigrant who lives two doors away from me and works at the 7-Eleven down the street? What about the elderly people in my building? They're not gonna know what happened, they might not even remember doing it by the time it goes down.

I'm in a more privileged place than most people, in that I'm comfortable with legalese and how to operate with regards to contracts and that sort of thing. So, after the high-pressure sales were no longer clogging my brain, I was able to go "wait, what did I just agree to?". I read the papers left to me, went "this is awful" and "wow, fuck those guys" respectively, canceled it within the cancel window, and called my state senator saying "hey, this is totally bad up, you need to do something about it". I did, what's it called--civic engagement, something that actually still works in Massachusetts. And his office is on it, they've co-sponsored a bill to give the state AG authority to deal with these scams, and I called my rep and rep-at-large afterwards to make sure that they're aware of it and are going to vote for the bill. But it's not just civic engagement, it's community engagement: ever since, because I am fortunate and I can do it safely because I'm a pretty tall, pretty broad white dude who has no reason to be intimidated by these people and knows the rules they have to operate under, any time they come in the building and I'm around, I make sure they leave, or I call the cops.

This is not something solved merely by education. This is something solved by the communities in which we all live grabbing the metaphorical torches and keeping the wolves at bay rather than letting them take the weak. Not allowing wolves to eat the least of us is why we invented society in the first place, isn't it?