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.
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.