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>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 e

>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) 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.

supernova87a 6y ago
I think you might be surprised, as a practical matter, that many people in the world are not happy when their prudent choices are invalidated by a change in the government policy in favor of others who took the opposite choice as you. And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so. 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.
- cdolan 6y ago
  Best comment yet. Take my upvote.
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  > How do you feel? 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.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    How do we feel and how does it matter more than someone's bank account? It starts to, if it determines what we're going to do next, when provided certain incentives and systems in which to behave. 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.
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
BobbyJo 6y ago
It's called 'moral hazard', and avoiding it is paramount to a functioning capitalist society.
cscurmudgeon 6y ago
Shelter is even more important and fundamental than education. Will the government be taking care of mortgages next?
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  That would be great. Maybe they can abolish landlords while they are at it. Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions?
  - ikerdanzel 6y ago
    Sounds like communism. It has failed in China and USSR when they abolished the landlords. And now they revive landlords and fully embraced capitalism. I guess they did it wrong. We can do it better this time. Make Karl Great Again.
    - AstralStorm 6y ago
      It didn't fail at solving this particular problems, just the authoritarian solution used caused corruption. In fact many of the buildings from that era still stand. It was not the abolition of rent that built them and parceled them out to people. 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.)
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Well now we can't pass up the opportunity to hear about this. How would that one work? The landlords bit?
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
      Well, you see, landlords are a classic edge case of property rights and unregulated Capitalism. 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.

supernova87a 6y ago

I think you might be surprised, as a practical matter, that many people in the world are not happy when their prudent choices are invalidated by a change in the government policy in favor of others who took the opposite choice as you. And that they be called "selfish" for thinking so. 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.

cdolan 6y ago
Best comment yet. Take my upvote.
thomastjeffery 6y ago
> How do you feel? 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.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  How do we feel and how does it matter more than someone's bank account? It starts to, if it determines what we're going to do next, when provided certain incentives and systems in which to behave. 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.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago

BobbyJo 6y ago

It's called 'moral hazard', and avoiding it is paramount to a functioning capitalist society.

cscurmudgeon 6y ago

Shelter is even more important and fundamental than education. Will the government be taking care of mortgages next?

thomastjeffery 6y ago
That would be great. Maybe they can abolish landlords while they are at it. Oh, are we meant to be afraid of these solutions?
- ikerdanzel 6y ago
  Sounds like communism. It has failed in China and USSR when they abolished the landlords. And now they revive landlords and fully embraced capitalism. I guess they did it wrong. We can do it better this time. Make Karl Great Again.
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    It didn't fail at solving this particular problems, just the authoritarian solution used caused corruption. In fact many of the buildings from that era still stand. It was not the abolition of rent that built them and parceled them out to people. 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.)
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Well now we can't pass up the opportunity to hear about this. How would that one work? The landlords bit?
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    Well, you see, landlords are a classic edge case of property rights and unregulated Capitalism. 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.