1) High‑cost, repeat‑use credit: Payday & subprime lenders

• Why it profits: Revenues hinge on rollovers and reborrowing.  The typical Borrower is trapped in long loan sequences, paying fees repeatedly while the principal barely declines.
  Evidence: The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found 80% of payday loans are reborrowed within 14 days, with many borrowers stuck for ~196 days/year; long sequences (≥10 loans) are common.
  Further data: A 2025 report estimates that $2.4B in annual fees are extracted from low-income borrowers through storefront payday lending alone.
  Mechanism: Lenders gain direct access to bank accounts/post-dated checks, focusing on the ability to collect, not the ability to repay.
  Research synthesis: Academic and policy work highlights how rollovers and permissive rules sustain debt cycles.

2) Subprime auto finance and add-on products

• Why it profits: Hidden fees, bundled add-ons (e.g., GAP insurance), misapplied payments, and aggressive repossessions raise total costs and keep borrowers dependent on costly credit.
  Evidence: CFPB supervisory findings (2024) documented illegal practices: wrongful repossessions even after payments/extensions, deceptive APR marketing, and failure to refund add-ons—issues especially prevalent among subprime lenders.
  Practical Impact: Auto debt is now second only to mortgages; the sector’s scale magnifies harms. 

3) Rent-to-own (RTO) retail

• Why it profits: “No credit needed” pitches target cash-strapped customers, who often pay 2–3× retail (or more) over time; aggressive collections can coerce payment.
  Evidence: FTC testimony and studies flag high effective prices, unclear disclosures, and harassment risks; a major enforcement case against Progressive Leasing showed consumers typically paid ~2× retail under misrepresented “same as cash” claims.
  Demographics: RTO usage skews toward lower-income, less educated households, indicating a model built on constrained choices. 

4) Multi-level marketing (MLM) recruiting

• Why it profits: Income primarily flows to a small apex; most participants earn little or nothing, yet aggressive earnings claims persist, drawing in people seeking opportunity.
  Evidence: An FTC staff review of 70 MLMs found most disclosures omit low/no earnings, ignore expenses, and highlight outliers; data show “the vast majority” of participants earn ≤$1,000/year, and many earn $0.
  Regulatory signal: The report underscores systemic issues with deceptive earnings framing. 

5) Private‑prison & carceral services ecosystems

• Why it profits: Bed guarantees and occupancy-based contracts misalign incentives, while vendors monetize services (phones, commissary, medical) used by people with few options.
  Evidence: Private prisons hold ~8% of inmates, but contracts and oligopolistic providers (CoreCivic, GEO, MTC) rely on bed‑minimums—a design that rewards high occupancy rather than rehabilitation.
  Economic footprint: Thousands of companies profit around incarceration; phone/commissary costs reach $2.9B/year for families.
  Context: DOJ and scholarly analyses document growth and incentive problems across privatized correctional services. 

6) Medical‑debt collection (including some nonprofit hospital systems)

• Why it profits: Aggressive billing/collections (lawsuits, wage garnishments, liens) extract payments from patients with limited financial literacy or options; charity care is often hard to access.
  Evidence: KFF Health News/NPR investigation: two-thirds of sampled hospitals maintain policies enabling lawsuits/credit reporting/selling debts; practices span prestigious systems.
  Critiques & counterpoints: Industry groups dispute methodology, but multiple independent reports spotlight widespread aggressive tactics among nonprofits.
  Recent developments: Debt buydowns by nonprofits highlight the scale of the problem and the policy churn over how medical debt is reported. 

7) Attention‑ad-based media & social platforms

• Why it profits: Outrage and emotionally charged content drive engagement, which drives ad revenue; algorithms prioritize divisive, moral, and emotional posts even if accuracy suffers.
  Evidence: Academic and working paper findings show that engagement-optimized ranking amplifies misinformation and polarization; Facebook’s “Meaningful Social Interactions” shift is linked to greater affective polarization; audits find that divisive out-group content is amplified beyond user preferences.
  Industry analyses: Research and journalism describe how cable and social media “sell anger” to maximize attention.
  Psychology & ethics: Reviews explain how algorithms exploit social‑learning biases, over-serving prestigious/ingroup/moral/emotional content irrespective of truth. 

8) Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) & opaque drug‑pricing middle layers

• Why it profits: Rebates, spread pricing, and vertical integration can steer formularies toward higher-list-price drugs, with limited transparency about who captures the savings; complexity keeps consumers dependent and confused.
  Evidence: The Commonwealth Fund explains PBM revenue streams (rebates, spreads, affiliated pharmacies) and why opacity makes them central to total drug spending; regulators are investigating competitive harms.
  Professional associations: AMA highlights high market concentration and incomplete patient pass-through of rebates; most enrollees are in vertically integrated plans.
  Debate: Some analyses question whether rebates directly raise list prices, but even industry-friendly studies acknowledge the complexity and incentives that may not benefit patients. 

9.  What these models have in common is that recognizing these patterns helps you see how systemic issues persist and what you can do to challenge them.  By understanding the common themes, you can better advocate for policies that promote fairness and transparency.

·         Information asymmetry: Consumers don’t see full costs/risks (RTO, subprime add-ons, MLM earnings, hospital billing). 

·         Switching barriers: Contract terms, credit reporting, repossessions, and litigation lock people in.

·         Algorithmic amplification: Platforms monetize attention by promoting content that keeps audiences angry or confused—not necessarily informed. 

·         Regulatory gaps or misaligned incentives: Bed guarantees, rebate structures, and weak disclosure rules reward dependency over upward mobility. 

10   Practical countermeasures (what actually helps): Knowing effective strategies, like enforcing bank-debit safeguards or requiring clear cost labels, can motivate you to push for policy changes and hold businesses accountable.

• “Ability‑to‑repay” and rollover limits for small-dollar credit; enforce bank‑debit safeguards.
• Auto‑finance reforms: Ban abusive add-on practices, standardize payment applications, and curb wrongful repossessions. 
• RTO transparency: Require total‑cost labels and clear cancellation/refund rules; continue enforcement against deceptive pricing. 
• MLM guardrails: Scrutinize earnings claims; require complete‑population income disclosures, including expenses. 
• Carceral contracting: Tie payments to outcomes (recidivism reduction, rehabilitation) instead of occupancy minimums; regulate vendor fees (phones/commissary). 
• Medical‑debt protections: Expand charity‑care access, limit extraordinary collections, restrict credit‑reporting of medical debt. 
• Platform accountability: Shift ranking toward user preferences and quality signals; audit engagement-driven algorithms for misinformation and polarization. 
• PBM transparency & competition: Mandate transparent rebate pass-through and limit anti-competitive vertical integration. 

Bottom line

The actors who make money by keeping people poor, ignorant, and dependent are not a single group but interlocking models: high-cost credit, predatory retail financing, exploitative recruiting structures, opaque healthcare billing, carceral vendors, and attention-based media platforms.  Each profit when information is hidden, options are limited, and emotions are manipulated—which is why transparency, competition, and outcome-aligned rules are the levers that work.