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Comment by kryogen1c | Hacker News Reader

It troubles me that topics like this usually turn into FUD about the 1% instead of recognizing government interference and subsidation as the problem. The parable of the scorpion and frog [1] is exactly relevant. I wish Americans would stop shouting for more government to fix problems the government created in the first place.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog?wp...

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The only way these companies can reclaim the money that they've lent to students is through the backing of the government, and the legal mechanisms that have been provided to them to use the state to collect money.

Isn't cancelling debt a form of less government interference, where the government will no longer allow its resources to be used to go after another person's property?

Neither the article nor the link you share mention the government or the 1%, or even investigate causes or solutions for student loan debt at all.

The article is about student loan debt, and my claim is that it's the government's fault. My link is purposefully not on topic - that's the purpose and definition of a parable.

This must be the perfect HN content free libertarian retort.

The text is 100% generic. You could post it below any article that is somehow about a problem that is at least somehow, somewhat, just maybe, slightly caused by the government.

Your comment adds precisely as much to the discussion as a blank "Hi! I'm a libertarian!" would.

If your concern is value added, I'm not sure why you posted what you did - certainly didn't add much to the conversation.

Why do you think associating my talking point with a political party makes it incorrect or not useful?

I think you have an outdated model of student loans. There's no longer a government guaranteed bank issued student loan model (FFEL ended in 2010). Instead the overwhelming majority of student loans are made directly by the Department of Education. For better or worse the student loan issue is almost wholly about government action, not banks.

Incidentally the same is true of mortgages post-2008. Again for better or worse, the US at the present time has a highly socialized credit sector when in comes to individual debt.

I did not know that but it doens't really change the conclusion. If the government left the banking sector alone then banks would have to handle loan and security as a matter of self preservation.

Looking from a historical perspective we are really running late on a dept-reseting event. Usually a civil war or bank run caused a reset on the economy once in a while but the latest period of government banks, global banks and banks too large to fail has so far been protected by government interference from the same fate. The result is that there is a lot more unsecured debt in the economy than a strict market based economy with no government interference would allow.

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