Why It’s So Hard to Regulate Payday Lenders

Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, an eighteenth-century social reformer, envisioned the colony as an economic utopia—a haven for those locked in Britain’s debtors’ prisons. Oglethorpe petitioned King George II to allow the country’s worthy poor a second chance in an overseas settlement, and then instituted laws that sought to erase class distinctions while prohibiting alcohol and slavery. The experiment lasted less than two decades, cut short by Spanish hostilities and resistance from residents who wanted to own slaves and drink rum.