It sounds like a line of reasoning that programmers fall into. "This code is so stupid! Shouldn't it be like blah!?" And then a more senior person tells you a story and yeah, you couldn't have found a better solution given the circumstances.

Not really. The solution is just not politically palatable because it requires increased wealth transfers from the haves to the have nots.

Whatever the population feels like should not be subject to market pricing.

Also, whatever is prohibitively expensive to duplicate, such as water/sewage/gas pipes, electrical/fiber wires, etc. Or public transport like underground train systems.

"not subject to market pricing" is quite a spectrum of practices, and depending on how you define it, it could be almost nothing, or almost everything in the US.

Taxes, tariffs, subsidies, affect market pricing quite a bit and are extremely common. Some consumer protection laws place very loose pricing rules on businesses that are literally price controls, but in practice allow pricing to fluctuate with market rates. Some other industries have segments which are price controlled, and other segments that are not, i.e. healthcare, insurance.

I mean that the market price should not be obfuscated. I have no qualms about society choosing to subsidize certain things, but the costs should be explicitly recognized.

For example, give people access to higher education. Okay, have the government operate the higher education institutions. Or give the students cash to pay for the higher education institutions.

But do not obfuscate costs by guaranteeing all student loans with zero underwriting. (The more politically popular method since it keeps taxes low now and lets politicians say they helped people). Of course, this price obfuscation rears its ugly head in 20 to 30 years once tuition is now $50k+ per year.

3/4 of post-secondary students in the US do go to schools operated by the government, that doesn't preclude those institutions from charging tuition.

Do you mean 'obfuscated' or 'inflated'?

I'm not sure how prices are obfuscated in US higher education... prices are published and you sign several pieces of paper with the price on it before you walk into class for the first time. Guaranteed loans don't obfuscate prices (in fact, DoE loans have more paperwork than private loans), they enable schools to inflate prices because it gives more buying power to their students. This isn't something that would be fixed by handing out cash instead, in fact, grants/scholarships are another factor that have enabled schools to inflate costs. If you shift the demand curve up and to the right, the equilibrium price goes up -- it doesn't really matter what shifted it.

The lack of underwriting is what obfuscated the prices (along with non dischargability of loans in bankruptcy).

A prudent lender would not lend a teenager tens of thousands of dollars to study something the society does not want (indicated by high probability of low paying careers as a result of that education).

Grants/scholarships/subsidized tuition might push demand and hence prices higher, but because grants impact taxpayers’ wallets today, there would be a built in check on spending. Not so with lending the money to teenagers.

> because grants impact taxpayers’ wallets today

The government can defect spend, and raise taxes later. That's even more of an obfuscated price than an ill-advised loan. Either mechanism of surprise costs is a bad thing.

The root of the higher-ed problem is social. We're forcing kids to make career decisions before they're ready, and we're forcing them into paths based upon 1970s stereotypes about the workplace. 50% of counselors and secondary-teachers are clueless about the broader workplace, and the other 50% would be politically chastised by parents if they told the truth.

We'd solve 80% of our student loan crisis if it was politically okay to tell kids:

1. If you don't have an interest in higher learning, don't want to go to college, or "just want a job" you shouldn't go to college. Don't go to college because your mother is pressuring you to do it, because she finds it 'unfashionable' or 'embarrassing' if you don't.

2. Just because you can do something doesn't mean someone will pay you to do it. How many job openings are in that career path, how many people are competing for that job, and how do you rank against them?

3. Academic talent is 50% of what employers care about. Nobody is going to care about your GPA if you don't have social, professional, and self-marketing skills.