“Debt is the Slavery of the Free.”

Publilius Syrus (Roman author, 1st century B.C.).


Why Mass Default?

Mass Default on personal debt will bring about immediate and total freedom from debt for the individual and is an effective form of protest against the banks and the government for the millions of discontented people who wish to see real change to the way the world functions.

Continuing to repay debt validates the current neo-liberal orthodoxy and only serves to keep it in place. The financiers and the financial system that serves them so well are dependent on the belief that people will repay what they borrow. But what if this were to change…

The Mass Default Movement

Traditional protest has proven ineffective and does nothing to harm the banks or financial institutions – they just wave their banknotes at you from their towers while you march on the streets. The only way to make them listen and to bring about a rearrangement of the world order is to target their weak point and the only thing that will make them sit up and take notice: the profit margin.

“Let us unite in our non-payment and have ourselves a mass default revolution.”

Paul Livingson, The Bankruptcy Diaries, 2011




Much of the personal debt foisted on people during the easy credit years was a hostile act on the part of the banks and is odious debt. There is no moral obligation to repay this debt.


People should be free and able to live their lives without having their brief time on this planet ruined by those who chase profit for their own personal gain and at the expense of other people’s happiness.


There is no shame to being in debt as the system is set up for you to be carrying enormous liabilities and its survival is dependent on your indebtedness to keep feeding shareholder profits and bankers’ pay packets.


There is no stigma in defaulting. Default should be a purely economic decision, or one based solely on your desire to live; emotions or outdated ethical positions should not come into it and certainly not while the system is so weighted against the individual.  


Default is a necessary act, both for personal freedom and as an act of rebellion against the dominance and power of the financial institutions. Mass default will liberate the individual at the same time as undermining the power of the banks.


Who am I to be recommending Mass Default?

I have lived through the dark days of debt and know how a life can be blighted by this scourge of our age. I have also come out the other side by taking the decision to default. I am free from debt and each day I reap the rewards of a life unfettered.

Yet I see a world where millions of debtors remained enslaved to banks who have been bailed-out and have returned to ‘bonuses as usual’, a world of unfairness where the people at the bottom bear the brunt of savage cuts while those at the top suffer no hardship and continue to gain assistance from governments to further increase their wealth.

I do not propose Mass Default from an obscure philosophical position – I promote such action based on very real, first-hand experience. Life without debt is a life worth living. A debt free life can be yours if you want it.