I went through the document that purports to justify the banning of payday lending. The pertinent section bears the subhead “Payday Lending is Not Missed.” Read through it and you find out that that isn’t the truth. The survey was done on a small sample (159 responses) and while most said they were indifferent or even glad that payday lending was forbidden, there WERE some people who reported that it had had a negative effect on them. A minority, but so what? That isn’t the same as nobody. The right conclusion here is that the banning of payday lending has forced some people to resort to alternatives they thought less desirable when short of money.
Consider this hypothetical. A group of people in New York hates opera. They call it immoral, too expensive, and a waste of time. Some people even seem to have gotten hooked on it. They succeed in getting the city government to ban the Met and the Civic Opera. A year later, the government commissions a survey. A random sampling of New Yorkers is asked if they feel that their lives are worse off because opera is gone. Only a small percentage of the respondents say that they are worse off because New York no longer has any live opera, so the study trumpets the conclusion: Opera is Not Missed. When interviewed, the head of the anti-opera league says, “People have plenty of other musical options. Banning opera was the right thing to do.”
We shouldn’t make (or later try to justify) coercive interference with peaceful activities just because only a small number of people are hurt.
