I think you might be surprised by how many people in that situation would be happy for those who benefited, even at the same time that they are upset that they landed on the other side of the timegate of the policy. Requiring "missed out" scenarios to not occur for any policy like this is too burdensome to society, and too conciliatory to the selfish who would rather the policy not happen at all if they weren't able to benefit from it.
People working and making material sacrifices over their lifetimes only to see those burdens lifted for others are not a small edge case to be brushed away.
How about if I put it in a HN-relevant case (and to paint it in more obviously judgemental terms to make the point).
You and a colleague are given a 2-week deadline to deliver some code. It's a tough deadline. You are diligent and work day and night, overtime, missing your kids birthday and having your spouse mad at you, to meet the deadline and deliver your part. Your colleague has been a low performer consistently, asks your help to finish the work, doesn't actually finish it by the due date. Your boss, at the delivery meeting, says, actually, this was just a motivational exercise to get us to practice coding and teamwork, and didn't really count after all. She won't even bother looking at your work because it was just for your personal development. We're a team.
How do you feel? How about we run that again the next 2 weeks. What are you going to do? Feeling good for your colleague who was about to get in some trouble, but luckily it all turned out ok? Your wife and kid will be glad for that I'm sure.
And aside from all that, my points about the unintended incentives of such a policy remain.
Sorry, but they are called selfish because they are selfish. And, they are part of the reason we can't make any changes for the common good anymore. We can't seem to politically make things easier that were previously difficult. This "I suffered to do X, therefore everyone in the future must suffer to do X" is a toxic, progress-limiting, and quintessentially American point of view. Same logic as "We can't have universal healthcare, because I have been paying so long for my own healthcare!" and "We can't relax immigration policies, because when I immigrated, it was difficult!" and "We can't take care of our poor elderly because I paid my own 401K for decades!"
I paid back over $200K in student loans over more than a decade. I'm glad they're paid, finally. Not having them hanging around my neck is helping me financially get on track. If there is a chance someone younger than me (maybe even my own kids) can go through his or her life without that burden, I am all for it. Their success does not diminish mine.
How much of your salary are you willing to give for this student loan forgiveness program?
$10,000? every year?
Not that much? Why are you being so selfish?
Oh, and to answer your actual question, yes, I'd much rather have $300 of my tax bill every paycheck go towards the "making education free for everyone" fund rather than the "blowing up a kid hiding in a hole with an AK47" fund.
How does that take higher precedence than the literal financial situation of millions of people?
> Your colleague has been a low performer consistently
You are painting a very different picture here. People by and large don't get into unrecoverable student loan debt because they are low performers. Many of them achieve excellent grades. Their work is simply not compensated. So here in your metaphor, you have made a demon out of the victim.
> How about we run that again the next 2 weeks. What are you going to do?
Again, this metaphor has strayed from the reality it is meant to compare to. Student loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system. It's an N time deal. N increases during the time it takes to overhaul our failed higher education system. Because we are motivated to keep N low, we are motivated to quickly overhaul our failed higher education system.
> Your boss, at the delivery meeting, says, actually, this was just a motivational exercise to get us to practice coding and teamwork
Notice how even in your metaphor, you are victimizing your teammate when it is clearly your boss who is at fault. That part of the metaphor tracts quite well with reality. In reality, you are blaming the student when the universities and stagnant wages are to blame.
> And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so.
Indeed it might be.
Yes, loan forgiveness isn't a perpetual system (as in my example), for the student receiving it. Obviously. It's perpetual if you do that for every class into the future.
And yes, I said openly in my preface that the picture I'm painting is to illustrate the point of incentives and policies -- not to say at all that student debt holders are underperformers. You miss my point if so.
In other words, it's perpetual so long as we perpetuate the underlying problem.
So let's solve the underlying problem, too. By instituting Student Loan Forgiveness, we are suddenly motivated to overhaul our higher education system so that it does not demand student debt.
Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions?
Capitalism is praised as a motivator for people to contribute to society with the promise of fiscal returns. Landlords make zero contribution, while attaining huge returns.
Abolishing landlords would accomplish one of Marx's most significant goals without completely throwing out property rights and capitalism.
> How would that one work?
Well, like any implementation, that's up for discussion. The general idea is that we would remove the ability for landlords to charge rent. Landlords would have an explicit infringement on their property rights. They would no longer have the right to demand recurring payment from occupants of their properties. They would have restrictions of their ability to evict tenants.
Of course, the implementation is where this idea gets contentious. Are landlords allowed to evict tenants who destroy property? Do landlords even own property anymore, or is it explicitly given to tenants? What about multi-dwelling properties? Who owns the furnace in an apartment complex? Do we create a third-party authority? Can any of this be accomplished without full-fledged Communism?
Most of the complications lie in the change from status quo. It's pretty complicated to decide who owns property that is already owned by landlords, but it's pretty straightforward to make it illegal to enter new rental contracts.
I agree that simply throwing out the words "abolish landlords" trivializes a lot, but it's still an idea worth exploring. What we have now isn't inherently better. It's a pretty obvious failing. People are homeless while homes lie vacant. People are inheriting huge swaths of property, making wealth and power, then turning that power toward policy that benefits them. These are real problems, and they deserve attention.
You're saying that residential property gets a special restriction on how people who own something are able to use it or enter into agreements on how they can charge others for the use of it?
Who occupies a house then? Only the owner?
I get that this proposal is a significant change from the status quo. That's the point. The status quo has some glaring issues. I understand it's difficult to take proposals for big changes seriously, but does that mean we should not take the problems of our current system seriously?
> You're saying that residential property gets a special restriction on how people who own something are able to use it or enter into agreements on how they can charge others for the use of it?
Yes. Specifically, no one can enter an agreement where housing can be rented. The core idea is that housing can be owned and sold, just that it can't be rented. There can be some discussion as to whether short term contracts like hotels could be allowed, but they would have to be regulated to prevent abuse.
The only question left is what to do about extant rental contracts.
> Who occupies a house then? Only the owner?
The owner or a guest. That's how housing works outside renting.
If you can't charge rent on property, then you are incentivized to sell it, thereby flooding the home ownership market and lowering the cost of housing.
This is a concept that has been discussed at length elsewhere. I encourage you not to use me as your only source of education.
I really think you need to think about unintended consequences. Not even unintended -- like, kindergarten 0th order effects.
> I really think you need to think about unintended consequences. Not even unintended -- like, kindergarten 0th order effects.
Like I said, this is a serious idea that has existed for decades, not some trivial thing I pulled out of my ass. Just because it doesn't instantly appeal to you does not mean it is worthless.
I'm not going to sit here and step you through every consideration made on this topic. If you are honestly interested, you can go read about it yourself.
Frankly, your decision to talk down to me like I'm some kind of thoughtless child merely stifles the conversation for both parties. Kindly get off your high horse.
Let me guess, on some of the other discussions on HN you would be of the position that people should have the right to repair their mobile phones themselves, control what software runs on their computers, etc. etc? And yet, you would propose interfering with people's most fundamental desire to control and do what they want with the house they own?
Someday, I'm sure you'll realize that it's more productive to work within and guide basic human nature, than to try to put rules down that everyone wants to break.
In other words, if you appear to be talking down to me, it is because you are. I got that.
> Fundamentally upending a system that has brought prosperity to generations of people because it has become marginally harder for some today -- that's mature and responsible? Everyone should just share?
"Fundamentally upending" is your categorization, not mine. What you call, "brought prosperity to generations of people" is what I call, "concentrated wealth into the hands of a tiny tiny fraction of society". That's not a thing I am proud of. I don't call the system that made that happen "mature" or "responsible". The reality of those people "not sharing" has devastating effects for millions of others. Four hundred men's "prosperity" is literally millions' poverty.
> Let me guess, on some of the other discussions on HN you would be of the position that people should have the right to repair their mobile phones themselves, control what software runs on their computers, etc. etc? And yet, you would propose interfering with people's most fundamental desire to control and do what they want with the house they own?
Yes. Abolishing rental contracts for housing in no way conflicts with those other things. In fact, abolishing rental housing contracts would put more people in a position to do what they want with the house they live in.
You see, people predominately do not rent their computers. People in general don't pay half of their income for permission to rent someone else's computer because they can't afford to buy their own. If they did, they would fundamentally not be able to access the right to repair that computer or arbitrarily run whatever software they want on it.
Can your ideologue brain handle it, or does it break too many rules?
Someday you might learn that your current perspective isn't the ultimate best way of thinking ever. Or you won't. The latter is looking more likely at the moment.
These two failed though at producing other goods, like food, due to various kinds of mismanagement. Not at housing people or providing employment. Or at basic to middle school education. (Only at higher it did ultimately fail due to anti-intellectualist streak.)
> Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions?
Not afraid, but how about we spend a non-zero amount of brain power seeing if that is good or not rather than painting opponents as cowardly?
Is asking to think too much to ask?
Well, that's pretty intense. But as a thought experiment, I suppose we can go all the way down this slippery slope.
> Lets start with you.
Well no, that's not how it works. We start with literally everyone at the same time. That's what Communism means. The fact that you need to change it to make it look unappealing is telling.
Granted, I'm not advocating communism here. I'm just pointing out that landlords are an obvious edge case. Landlords provide no benefit, while reaping a huge reward, especially when you factor in generational wealth.
> Not afraid, but how about we spend a non-zero amount of brain power seeing if that is good or not rather than painting opponents as cowardly?
That's what I'm trying to do here. The comment I was replying to insinuated that we should spend a zero amount of brain power considering Socialist policy.
> Is asking to think too much to ask?
In addition, property purchase is legally complex, time-consuming, and risky. If you cannot find someone to purchase the home that you purchased, you can't really get rid of it. Renting thus provides optionality - the choice to walk away. The landlord takes on the risk of not being able to find a renter and having to cover the mortgage and property tax costs for a space they're not using. If you think that'll never happen, take a look at Detroit.
This is not to say that landlords are perfect, or that having them is better than the costs of them. But when you are going around making, in my opinion overly simplistic arguments, you weaken the strength of the underlying case. It makes it hard to take other things you say seriously.
As an example there were people who lost their jobs during this pandemic and I was lucky enough not to. The people who lost their jobs received an extra 600 dollars on top of their normal unemployment. This benefited society as a whole since jobs were very scarce for certain groups and kept a lot of people from having problems. If I ever lose my job and take unemployment I won't be upset at those people from receiving an extra benefit during this time period and wish they had been made to suffer instead. I'm also not angry at the local government for building a library on the other side of the city that I will almost certainly never go to.
Bringing it back to these scrimping and saving people, most people save money to reduce their loan burden after college. Its a vanishing small number of people who are not rich or receiving large scholarships that pay for college completely out of pocket
As I said, it would be more reasonable to give everyone a credit, not forgive debt.
I think the more reasonable thing would be to forgive debt AND find a solution to making sure nobody else has to suffer from crushing debt for education. Make community college free, heavily subsidize people who go to public colleges, etc.
I am actually sympathetic to the fact that social pressure or other structural dynamics may encourage people to make bad choices, but they were not “forced”.
How does “society” force someone to get an expensive degree?
It is always a choice
Your position is common among "personal responsibility" absolutists, which, like most absolutism, doesn't really work.
1. Absolutely 2. What’s this about a job making you happy?
> But speaking realistically, society forces people to do many things without using direct physicality or threats.
I don’t get this line of thinking. I can come up with compulsory taxation, but you can always move to another society. What has society forced you to do?
1. Nature forces you to eat and have shelter. There's no discussing it.
2. Society does not give you free food or shelter or land to farm and tools to do it, nor means of transportation. (When it does, it's either conditional, or insufficient numbers, or both.)
3. By this you're forced to enter job market to keep alive, which forces you to enter into specific education path.
4. Even where education is free, point 2 holds. Where it's not, you are being subject to an additional whip of capitalism, debt.
5. Migrant jobs have evaporated in many places. As has cheap enough housing. You cannot also save enough to move in most cases, so you cannot even move in practice. If you do so, you're becoming a refugee, which is not a good thing at all. Even more so if you're bound further by different language or culture, or move to especially xenophobic place lured by possibilities.
6. If you have a family, you also need to consider them when moving. If you own property, perhaps inherited, you have to consider what to do with it as well, and you're taking a financial and existential risk. The support network you have (family, friends, connections) will likely not reach to the new area.
7. Enjoying a forced job is like praising your slave master for not beating you too often. Though some jobs have enjoyable elements, these are typically available to elite or lucky few.
This in turn makes other people willing to pay more for whatever person x invested in with the accumulated debt, since debt is cheap and backed by the gov, people today rarely see it is a risk anymore.
An old, old complaint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_...
‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
then you tell these sorts of stories and hope that people admit that “i got mine so screw you” is a bad way to live.
it does not mean that student loan forgiveness can’t happen, or that societies are somehow forbidden from acting altruistically because people are going to have this feeling. It does mean you need to be ready for it.
For myself, my undergrad degree cost about $250k, and nobody gave me a scholarship, and i am overjoyed if someone else doesn’t have to play that idiotic game.
So let's consider the choice to go to college.
When I was growing up, I was told over and over again that if I got an Associates Degree that I would be practically guaranteed to higher wages. I was told that if I got a Bachelor's Degree, I would see higher wages still, and even higher for a Master's, PHD, etc.
Everyone I know has been taught this from an early age. We were taught that if we work hard and better ourselves that we will see a real monetary result. We were taught that that is the American dream. Millions of people believed that message.
That message ended up being a lie. Millions of Americans are now living in debt and can't declare bankruptcy on their student loans.
Don't these people deserve a solution? What was their fault? Working hard to better themselves and society?
> Think to the unintended consequences of what you thought were just good intentions. If your level of logic is "what could be so wrong about helping people get out of hardship", then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of administering / making economic policy...
What are your "good intentions"? Preserving the very unrelenting system of debt that got us here?
If your level of logic is "what might be immoral about helping people get out of hardship", then you are clearly not motivated to help people get out of hardship. Your motivation is instead to apply a strict moral rule over those who are in need.
> Are we only going to do this for current students? Are we going to do this for every student to come? What happens when a person knows that whatever debt they take out will be forgiven?
That's a good question. How long is it going to take to remove this structure of promised benefit leading to inescapable debt? That is how long we ought to remove that burden. That also gives us a clear motivation to overhaul our clearly broken higher education system.
Is your fear that "a person will know that whatever debt they take out will be forgiven", or is it "a debtor will know whatever debt they impose will be forgiven"? We need only replace the word "forgiven" with "recovered", and we see that this is already the system we have in place. People get into student loan debt honestly believing that higher education will lead them to the higher wages needed to pay that debt back. Universities are guaranteed to be paid by students, whether via recoverable debt or not, because bankruptcy is not on the table.
> Think to the unintended consequences of what you thought were just good intentions.
Exactly. If your good intention is to prevent the taxpayer from taking the burden of a broken system, your unintended consequence is millions of people living with unrecoverable debt, and the perpetuation of that same broken system.
Imagine how you would feel if you were from a family that had scrimped and saved to send you to college, you worked night jobs, etc. Only to find that at the end everyone else who had taken out loans had them forgiven (basically). What incentive is there to sacrifice or think ahead if this is what will happen at the end? I was panned for thinking such selfish thoughts at the act of someone so generous.
I think it would be more reasonable to give every student a $ gift at that point.
Watch out, mind you, if our government gets into the business of doing this. You'd better double check whether you think it's an absolute good thing.
When you pay someone's debts, you assume some participation into the choices they've made, or some small tacit approval of their choices. And when you forgive debt, it implicitly chooses some people over others. People who made what can objectively be called responsible choices to save and not take out debt will not be happy with what those who are less responsible receive.
Are we only going to do this for current students? Are we going to do this for every student to come? What happens when a person knows that whatever debt they take out will be forgiven?
Think to the unintended consequences of what you thought were just good intentions. If your level of logic is "what could be so wrong about helping people get out of hardship", then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of administering / making economic policy...