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> So, pardon in advance for the vulgar language, but why the fuck is this OK? From any company? shareholder capitalism. they have zero accountability except to

> So, pardon in advance for the vulgar language, but why the fuck is this OK? From any company? shareholder capitalism. they have zero accountability except to their shareholders.

cbennett 10y ago
> shareholder capitalism. they have zero accountability except to their shareholders. Random thought that just came to mind. Have coalition of debt holders (borrowers ) ever considered buying stock in these companies to influence them in the form of another company that is jointly owned or invested in by thousands or tens of thousands of folks? Eg, mass activism campaign launches request for everyone to invest X% of what they normally would have paid into loans for the month (above the minimum thresholds of course), and/ or y% of disposable income into this fund. Now obviously one or ten people doing this will own just a few hundred stocks, but thousands doing this get tens of thousands of stocks-- thats when it could get interesting ;) Obviously, would not be available to those really struggling under massive loan burdens and struggling to make every payment, BUT for those in the AND gate between reasonably high loan burden and comfortable income, which is a huge overlap with HN by the way, the impact could be massive. In the end the results could be beautiful though: cannibalizing capitalism , - an inside job.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  the combined assets of the entire class of student debtors is probably NEGATIVE (they are debtors, remember) whereas the assets of even a single major shareholder (Carl Icahn as a benchmark) are in the billions of dollars and outweigh the rest of it combined. this is one of the side effects of the massive income and wealth inequality American style capitalism causes.
  - cbennett 10y ago
    Present assests- probably, but when taken over a longer time scale this makes increasing sense. many folks with >100k debt usually have several grad degrees , medical, engineering, law, etc, & whether annualized or summed, their future earnings may be productively invested into an advocacy campaign which would not only benefit them but others who have less natural income cushion and thus less of a parachute. Individual mega-investors are no doubt powerful, but what about investor collectives. if a single company and/or entity can take on even 1/10th the power of Icahn collectively, it is something worth considering.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      there is asymmetry of purpose as well as asymmetry of net worth. an individual mega investor spends as much as he (or she, but lets be honest, its almost always he) wants on anything at all. a class of several tens of thousands of investors in a collective will struggle with their decision making in all the expected ways.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      That's why people put pressure on the administrators of pension funds to invest or divest in accordance with political goals.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>the combined assets of the entire class of student debtors is probably NEGATIVE Doesn't matter. As the saying goes: if you owe the bank $1,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100,000,000, the bank has a problem. Debtors as a group probably would have a great deal of collective bargaining power.
    - obstinate 10y ago
      If debtors could get organized and all stopped paying at once, it seems likely that Navient would run out of money before they got the spigot turned back on. The consequence of course would be that student loans would cease being made, or be made much less frequently. This would have effects, some good, some bad.
    - tajen 10y ago
      US has never had problems with putting 1% of their population in jail. If every student, even the children of billionaires, massively refuse to pay back as a group, the banks would be too happy to strike a deal with the children of billionaires in order to put the 99% others in jail.
      - wanderer2323 10y ago
        "US has never had problems with putting 1% of their population in jail." {Citation needed}
    - 55555 10y ago
      This is a pretty interesting idea. I have never heard of debtors banding together to negotiate lower debts before.
      - kazagistar 10y ago
        I'm not sure what you hope to get from it.
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    We need to be a little more clear: Carl Icahn's asset is the students' debts. That is what his wealth is made out of, in the way that soda is made out of corn syrup and water. No student debt would mean Carl Icahn would have to make an honest living, and he's not gonna go quietly.
- dominotw 10y ago
  people who can do this are benefitting from the way current things are setup. Why would they cut the branch they are sitting on.
  - cbennett 10y ago
    Target market would not be folks already massively invested in these stocks. Target market would be student loan debtors who have comfortable jobs and salaries north of 50k. Apps like Robinhood have opened the ability for folks earning even less than 50k , to comfortably invest. Many tens of thousands may be interested; there could be a bigger market opportunity than you think.
    - selimthegrim 10y ago
      How much is Robinhood taking in fees again?
- Merad 10y ago
  Ever seen those articles talking about how in the last few decades increases in wealth have overwhelmingly gone to the top 1%? This is the outcome. The little people can't hope to compete.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  Navient is a servicer. They make sure the money gets from the borrower's account into the lender's account on time. Their revenue consists entirely of the fees paid by the lenders for providing this service. Make radical changes that impact the servicer negatively and the lender will switch to a new servicer to manage its payment flow. The coalition of debt holders is now stuck with shares of some underperforming servicing company that just lost a huge contract.
theseatoms 10y ago
They're also accountable to the legal system.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  just barely. to be held legally accountable an injured party has to file suit, litigate the case (long and expensive), and win a judgment that will be a large enough quantity of money to force the company to not just break the law in the same way again because it was profitable to do so.
kaonashi 10y ago
They presumably have a charter to operate from a government that is supposedly by and of the people (all chuckling aside). That type of ideology is cancerous (it uses the resources of a host to replicate itself without regard to the host's well-being) to a social system.
throw2016 10y ago
This mythology needs to rest. There has been little shareholder capitalism action in recent history when one would think it would be at its highest. Let's just look at the financial crisis from 2008, all the fraud, mismanagement, downright criminality with serious consequences for the companies involved has seen little to no shareholder activism. No executives or CEOs have been held accountable for their behavior or called to action by shareholders inspite of taking huge hits on their holdings. The agency problem, 'short termism' and extravagant compensation and golden parachutes has also seen little action from shareholder activism. Yet when it comes to anti-social behavior in regard to customers, employees and wider society 'shareholder interests' is rolled out on cue as some 'central plank of capitalism' when it barely works. It's become self serving and meaningless.

> So, pardon in advance for the vulgar language, but why the fuck is this OK? From any company? shareholder capitalism. they have zero accountability except to their shareholders.

cbennett 10y ago

> shareholder capitalism. they have zero accountability except to their shareholders. Random thought that just came to mind. Have coalition of debt holders (borrowers ) ever considered buying stock in these companies to influence them in the form of another company that is jointly owned or invested in by thousands or tens of thousands of folks? Eg, mass activism campaign launches request for everyone to invest X% of what they normally would have paid into loans for the month (above the minimum thresholds of course), and/ or y% of disposable income into this fund. Now obviously one or ten people doing this will own just a few hundred stocks, but thousands doing this get tens of thousands of stocks-- thats when it could get interesting ;) Obviously, would not be available to those really struggling under massive loan burdens and struggling to make every payment, BUT for those in the AND gate between reasonably high loan burden and comfortable income, which is a huge overlap with HN by the way, the impact could be massive. In the end the results could be beautiful though: cannibalizing capitalism , - an inside job.

metaphorm 10y ago
the combined assets of the entire class of student debtors is probably NEGATIVE (they are debtors, remember) whereas the assets of even a single major shareholder (Carl Icahn as a benchmark) are in the billions of dollars and outweigh the rest of it combined. this is one of the side effects of the massive income and wealth inequality American style capitalism causes.
- cbennett 10y ago
  Present assests- probably, but when taken over a longer time scale this makes increasing sense. many folks with >100k debt usually have several grad degrees , medical, engineering, law, etc, & whether annualized or summed, their future earnings may be productively invested into an advocacy campaign which would not only benefit them but others who have less natural income cushion and thus less of a parachute. Individual mega-investors are no doubt powerful, but what about investor collectives. if a single company and/or entity can take on even 1/10th the power of Icahn collectively, it is something worth considering.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    there is asymmetry of purpose as well as asymmetry of net worth. an individual mega investor spends as much as he (or she, but lets be honest, its almost always he) wants on anything at all. a class of several tens of thousands of investors in a collective will struggle with their decision making in all the expected ways.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    That's why people put pressure on the administrators of pension funds to invest or divest in accordance with political goals.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>the combined assets of the entire class of student debtors is probably NEGATIVE Doesn't matter. As the saying goes: if you owe the bank $1,000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100,000,000, the bank has a problem. Debtors as a group probably would have a great deal of collective bargaining power.
  - obstinate 10y ago
    If debtors could get organized and all stopped paying at once, it seems likely that Navient would run out of money before they got the spigot turned back on. The consequence of course would be that student loans would cease being made, or be made much less frequently. This would have effects, some good, some bad.
  - tajen 10y ago
    US has never had problems with putting 1% of their population in jail. If every student, even the children of billionaires, massively refuse to pay back as a group, the banks would be too happy to strike a deal with the children of billionaires in order to put the 99% others in jail.
    - wanderer2323 10y ago
      "US has never had problems with putting 1% of their population in jail." {Citation needed}
  - 55555 10y ago
    This is a pretty interesting idea. I have never heard of debtors banding together to negotiate lower debts before.
    - kazagistar 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you hope to get from it.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  We need to be a little more clear: Carl Icahn's asset is the students' debts. That is what his wealth is made out of, in the way that soda is made out of corn syrup and water. No student debt would mean Carl Icahn would have to make an honest living, and he's not gonna go quietly.
dominotw 10y ago
people who can do this are benefitting from the way current things are setup. Why would they cut the branch they are sitting on.
- cbennett 10y ago
  Target market would not be folks already massively invested in these stocks. Target market would be student loan debtors who have comfortable jobs and salaries north of 50k. Apps like Robinhood have opened the ability for folks earning even less than 50k , to comfortably invest. Many tens of thousands may be interested; there could be a bigger market opportunity than you think.
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    How much is Robinhood taking in fees again?
Merad 10y ago
Ever seen those articles talking about how in the last few decades increases in wealth have overwhelmingly gone to the top 1%? This is the outcome. The little people can't hope to compete.
prostoalex 10y ago
Navient is a servicer. They make sure the money gets from the borrower's account into the lender's account on time. Their revenue consists entirely of the fees paid by the lenders for providing this service. Make radical changes that impact the servicer negatively and the lender will switch to a new servicer to manage its payment flow. The coalition of debt holders is now stuck with shares of some underperforming servicing company that just lost a huge contract.

theseatoms 10y ago

They're also accountable to the legal system.

metaphorm 10y ago
just barely. to be held legally accountable an injured party has to file suit, litigate the case (long and expensive), and win a judgment that will be a large enough quantity of money to force the company to not just break the law in the same way again because it was profitable to do so.

kaonashi 10y ago

They presumably have a charter to operate from a government that is supposedly by and of the people (all chuckling aside). That type of ideology is cancerous (it uses the resources of a host to replicate itself without regard to the host's well-being) to a social system.

throw2016 10y ago

This mythology needs to rest. There has been little shareholder capitalism action in recent history when one would think it would be at its highest. Let's just look at the financial crisis from 2008, all the fraud, mismanagement, downright criminality with serious consequences for the companies involved has seen little to no shareholder activism. No executives or CEOs have been held accountable for their behavior or called to action by shareholders inspite of taking huge hits on their holdings. The agency problem, 'short termism' and extravagant compensation and golden parachutes has also seen little action from shareholder activism. Yet when it comes to anti-social behavior in regard to customers, employees and wider society 'shareholder interests' is rolled out on cue as some 'central plank of capitalism' when it barely works. It's become self serving and meaningless.