>I really dislike how when debt collection gets talked about, the debt collectors are the evil ones. Never mind the person who signed a contract to pay x interest in return for y money and didn't pay it back.

Those are usually pretty predatory contracts. Consumer credit isn't like my mortgage, where someone reviewed my past five or more years of finances and decided my income and assets actually justified the loan. Hell, my mortgage has a much lower interest rate than most consumer credit (eg: car loans, credit cards, etc.).

Those high interest rates are rationalized as reflecting the risk of default on the debt. Ok. So if someone is going to default, you charge the next sucker more interest, because I don't see why you should be made whole off garnishing someone's paycheck when you choose to make predatory loans to risky borrowers.

De facto, the whole thing is just privatized taxation with extra steps: the "borrower" pays a monthly tax to the "creditor" for the privilege of existing while poor, and in exchange, they are kept, deliberately, in perpetual debt.

The only loans that the government should help you collect on are those designed to be paid off in full in the first place.