A student loan collector must halt collections
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And then Jamie Dimon calls Bitoin a ponzi scheme... Our entire economy is a ponzi scheme.
All of our money is created as dept, as such banks collect money on all of the money ever created. They create nothing of value for this. Why do we accept this?
Because buying a new car/house/collegedegree with money you don’t have is easier than with money you do have.
Hell, you’re on HN. Chances are your salary comes from somebody convincing somebody that they should be given money because in just a few short years they’re gonna have like so much more money. I know mine does
And I'm guessing your salary comes from a rich person, not from a bank that created the money as dept from thin air and now asks someone to pay them rent for said service.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Socialism%20never%20took%20roo...
Some context; I know the USA better than most Europeans, having lived and paid taxes there for three years, whilst working and traveling all over the USA. I would never call Americans stupid. I've met some stupid ones though obviously. But Americans as a whole are as interesting and diverse and awesome and loathsome and everything in between as any other countries' citizens.
The collective results of the media, political developments of the past few decades, the countries' legal makeup (local, state and federal law) and what not more together result in stupid situations. One of them being that the USA is incapable of providing clean and affordable drinking water to all of its citizens.
And if you have to resort to compare yourself to Venezuela you're losing anyway. It's a bit like the: "hey, at least we're not THAT bad". But you STILL cannot provide clean drinking water to your citizens. What's that saying again? Never be the smartest guy in the room? Maybe compare yourself with countries doing better than the USA and then try to improve things?
And no, not everything is that bad and there are tons of things I like way better in the USA than in Europe. Things are hardly ever that black and white. But comparing yourself to Venezuela is one of the weaker arguments here.
EDIT: just realized that parent comment stated he's not American; doesn't take away from any of my points regarding the Steinbeck quote and the Venezuela comparison.
Or "propaganda" as it's more usually known.
But I think the federal government exerts more control over US states than anyone exerts over Sweden. (Maybe the EU? I'm certainly no expert.)
I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "leftist" by saying that Venezuela isn't a Socialist country, but I'll have to in order to get the simple point accross that Venezuela operates a capitalist economy, protects private property, and the working class as a whole is not in power of any branch of the government; if Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, it simply does not exist in Venezuela. It's very simple when I say that there is no such thing as wage labour within a Socialist economy. Socialism isn't just when the government does stuff; that idea is a false one, so much that it would be wise to call it "vulgar Socialism".
The idea also that Socialism requires the implementation of policies that Venezuela has implemented is farcical, too. By "Socialism" Steinbeck, nor any other Socialist author is referring to price centrols; Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Steinbeck, Marx, Engels, Chomsky, Bookchin, Bakunin etc. had a very specific idea in mind; there's no need to be intellectually dishonest to advance the idea that Socialism makes you eat rabbits. It doesn't. They didn't eat rabbits in the Paris Commune nor in revolutionary Catalonia, nor to my knowledge Burkina Faso under Sankara.
If you want to read up on the modern advances in Socialist economy, I'd recommend looking at Paul W. Cockshott's Towards a New Socialism; to dismiss it without doing this research reeks of laziness or worse dishonesty. But please don't make assumptions about what Socialism is about while you have clearly failed to do the required research.
Perhaps because the quote by Steinbeck likely wasn't said, have one by Vonnegut instead:
"Socialism is no more an evil word than Christianity. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve."
Not really. I'm sure Socialism looks great in book form, but the implementation has never worked. I'm more interested in the reality than the theory.
Reality requires theory; you simply can't claim to make a comment on modern Socialism without reading about what theories modern Socialists have created as to how the economy should be run. I provided counterexamples to the idea that it "never worked", too. Though even if you choose to dismiss 20th century Communism, I hope you realise how ignorant it is of you to dismiss modern innovations in theory, which has not yet been put to the test. Do you see how silly it is to dismiss a theory you haven't even read about?
At the moment you appear to be the monarch who says that civil liberties for the populace look great in book form, but implementation of liberties has never worked. What of Lockean liberalism or even capitalism, which has thus far had disastrous consequences and foundations in terrible subjugation and enclosure in Western Europe?
Reality does require theory, but in the same way I don't really need to care about how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car, I don't need to care about your theories. The evidence for whether a theory is any good or not is how it works in reality. Do either of the two examples you gave still exists?
I think it ironic that you raise the subject of civil liberties, given that they are complete anathema to socialism and must be overcome for any sort of socialism to be implemented.
False, Oscar Wilde writes about how Socialism is the very peak of individualism, core freedom for artists and scientists especially who nowadays are limited severely in their freedom by the tyranny of want and the subservience of market forces which degrades culture until it is only the shell of what it once was. He's not the only one; Marcuse and Adorno have also noted this. George Orwell too. In fact, Communism is called the epitome of free association of people for the reason that it is so liberating.
>The evidence for whether a theory is any good or not is how it works in reality.
Not really, but if you want to go by that measure then capitalism must be immediately replaced.
>Do either of the two examples you gave still exists?
No, they were both crushed by invading forces; in the case of the Paris Commune by the French government and in the case of Revolutionary Catalonia by Franco while being attacked also by the authoritarian Soviets. You seem to be ignorant of the fact that it is within the interest of governments to oppose Communism, because Communism is a liberation movement which opposes the state. It is also within the interest of capital to crush such movements which attempt to free themselves from it. This is extremely obvious.
>I don't really need to care about how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car
So you choose to remain ignorant as to what philosophy drives the world which you live in? Why would you do such a thing? I just don't understand it, other than perhaps laziness.
The schools seem to have way too much power here. If this was any other industry, there would be more oversight and regulation.
The easy money from lending immunizes the schools from being cost conscious because it shifts the burden to the students, who are told they'll go to heaven if they only get a college degree.
Because that degree is valued, not for the education the student received, but as a formal gating mechanism: those who do not obtain it (and it better be from a "good" school) are (with a few exceptions) excluded from all possibility of ever having "good" jobs.
In other words, our hiring practices are the root of the problem.
Even in tech (where I know from experience that skill and education are only mildly correlated), education on the resume is still a gatekeeper and my company's recruiting of novices comes primarily from the better college campuses.
I've found there are so many people trying to get into IT that your portfolio counts for more than your qualifications (much like with a photographer).
I'd expect qualifications to matter less if there are few people trying to get into IT, since employers can less afford to miss a good candidate. If they get a hundred applicants for each position, they'll be more inclined to use a weak filter to throw out half of them on a first pass.
Obviously I'm not advocating people skip university. But I think it's important to remember that you can still compete in the job market without a degree.
Banks allow for an inefficient, non market driven educational system. Banks, as they are now, are not part of the free market, they even needed saving using public money instead of letting market forces decide their fate.
Because not enough people are fed up with it, or at least not fed up with it directly, in order to organise and change the system; there are many easier things to blace one's blame on, things which seem easier to change but are just as temporary and broken - like small changes in the tax level or as another commenter said school fees. Reducing school fees is merely tangential to your point, but people are convinced it's the right thing to do - because other solutions seem so helplessly out of reach that they are invisible to many such that they are not identified as problems at all.
We accept democracy in our politics, but the economy has just as much if not more influence over our lives, yet it is free from control. Adam Smith called the free market as "free" for this exact reason.
In fact the US and UK do have managed wealth redistribution - from working people of all classes to banks, investors, and property owners.
Young people are being used not to prop up the bank employee and managers but instead overly expensive faculty and facilities of college campuses, many of them are state run facilities! Better yet we don't stop there, we then roll them on the costs of supplies; namely books but it can include specific software; to just obtain their education. In many cases fees and such are added at the end to obtain certification needed to gain a license, something that should have been proven by their completion of the course load.
finally, not everyone needs a college education and not ever degree is worthy of financial aid.
Water, food, shelter and enough entertainment, alcohol or prescription painkillers to keep them docile enough to never question the actions of the genuinely obscenely wealthy and powerful that actually direct the course of human society for their own benefits.
If you want a change to this system you're going to need a total collapse first, which won't happen for a few decades at least (if it ever does) as the system is so geared towards maintaining itself (the status quo and every career politician produced by it) and resisting change.
A good start mibght be including three subjects in the education curriculum from childhood; Personal Financial Education, Ethics and Civics. I can guess why these things are longer part of the mandatory education systems in the west though.
That's why you end up with FPTP political systems where neither of your potential leadership candidates are even worth considering, and why financial services corporations continue to behave the same way they did prior to each and every economic crash they caused in the last century.
Of course, the burden of repairing the damage caused by the outrageously greedy and irresponsible always falls to the lowest working and middle classes.
Political philosopher Sheldon Wolin described the current system in the US as an Inverse Totalitarianism;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You could extend that to the UK too probably.
This sounds a lot like what was happening during the financial crisis a decade ago. Lenders were selling mortgage loans to Wall Street to be bundled into collateralized debt obligations. After those CDOs got sold a few times, people lost track of who actually owned a particular loan. When borrowers defaulted, it was in many cases impossible to prove who was legally entitled to collect on the debt.
(A line in a spreadsheet that says John Doe owes you $500K is not very convincing evidence to a judge - you need to be able to provide a document with John Doe's signature on it.)
So some jerk is buying a $50K loan for $1.5K. But trying to collect $50K, plus fees and penalties. And ruining someone's credit in the process.
That's insane.
Sounds fishy. The borrower was paying somebody at least up until he defaulted. Would not that entity be the one entitled to try to collect? Or were loans actually in default being sold around?
Notably, they didn't offer to cover my time, his time, and the expense of the lawyer. I value my time more than I value money. I consider these things theft of my time.
The nature of debt collection, and many other legal pickles is that if you are seen to be passively ignoring it, then it just ramps up.
Merely asking for proof is indistinguishable from ignoring claims because it leaves no paper trail. You have to actually get documents from them (or from a court) saying that they have no claim. And it costs a lot (whether in time, money or both) to get that.
But you can't ignore it, that's true.
> You have to actually get documents from them
> (or from a court) saying that they have no claim.
If I say that you owe me money, it's not necessary for you to obtain documents (from either me or from a court) stating that you don't owe me money - the onus is on me to _prove_ that you me money.
Even if I owe money...why should I pay you? Prove you bought the loans, tomorrow someone else can ask me to pay for it again.
That's an excellent point. The fact that you paid off a fraudster doesn't in any way change the fact that you still owe money to the legitimate owner of the loan. So you need to demand proof that whoever is asking you for payment is the owner of the loan and not a fraudster.
My own loan was initially government issued with a reasonable interest rate, but a year after finishing uni, it was sold off to a private fund that decided to jack up the interest rate to nearly 7%! In the UK, education used to be free. Now kids are leaving 3rd grade universities with 50k GBP debt, a ridiculously high interest rate and no quality job prospects. That's a lot of pressure on young shoulders (my sibling is going through this currently, and I can see how distressing it is).
And they wonder why young people can't get on the property ladder! The ignorance on behalf of the government is astounding! I'm not sure I'd want my kids to go through that, even if it means missing out on the social experiences of university.
The catch is it's something like a 9% income tax!
The worst thing is that the three big national parties(+) all have their fingers on this, so I'm not sure who you could rely on to fix it. And whether it might have to come with rationing to a certain fraction of the population being able to get free university.
Not to mention that education is a vital export industry which the Home Office keeps trying to destroy.
(+) The third largest party by MPs is the SNP who only stand in Scotland, where they have ruled out tuition fees
Why aren't judges fining them /their lawyers? Can I sue John Doe and demand that he pay me the money he took for his mortgage? Before filing a lawsuit, the "I bought your loan so pay me" chain should be settled in an acceptable way. Otherwise it's fraud.
I don't know the solution but having the govt secure all loans and think about forgiving them is not going to help the next generation. Where is the incentive for univ to bring their costs down? Also, where is the incentive for people to either shop for a college they can afford, or even forgo college in favor of some other training or on the job experience?