"Surely if you're starving and someone offers you a meal for your left arm it's best to take that meal." In the short term, possibly, and only especially if the situation was of your own creation. That might be up for debate though. They are predatory and can absolutely ruin people. The practice has been banned in a lot of places.
But in the long term, if people have to flock to services like that, if they stay popular, if circumstances of the economy/law drive them into it (e.g. situations not of their own making), then I think it says a lot about the failings of the safety net of a society that businesses like that are allowed to flourish.
If people couldn't take loans like this what would they do instead?
Probably whatever people in dire straits did before payday loan cunts existed? Tough it out? Seek help from friends and family, charity or church or government? There's too many people who use it for too many different purposes for me to give a universal answer to your question.
edit because I'm fuming at the idea of usury at the moment:
To me though it's the exact same as the mediums and psychics who go up to the still mourning and tell them they can speak with their dead husband/nan/child for a price. It's preying on someone who is not a rational actor and not in a correct frame of mind.
And they may not even understand all of what they're getting into. And before you pop the "well they shouldn't sign the contract if they don't know what it says" gem I can tell you where to put that Unless you'd also like to subsidize a course in contract law for everyone (although let's be honest not everyone would pass it, what then?) so that they could understand the 20 pages of forms they have to sign? Fees and terms can be glossed over, ommitted or even lied about and it's really fucking shitty to take advantage of people like that and then hide behind "oh well, should have read it better :iamatwat:"
I certainly don't understand 100% of all contracts I've ever signed and think there are few that have. There's a reason laws are in place to protect against exploitative clauses because otherwise society would devolve in an instant to "whoever writes the best contract wins." There's a reason things like "good faith" exist etc.
edit 2: apologies to any payday loan cunts reading this.
