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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

"Isn't this the same as traditional student debt or, worse, indentured servitude? Not really"

Saying "not really" doesn't make something so. This is, literary indentured servitude. By definition.

Thank you. The indentured servitude character of this stuff is most clear when we look at the $ALEX example. Selling off a chunk of future autonomy and income in order to finance migration to a place with more economic opportunity is exactly what poor folks did circa the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps we should look at the history of how that went before replicating it.

My understanding is that economically it was usually a mutually beneficial arrangement, and servants often ended up better off than a normal immigrant. The second-class status of servants is somewhat hard to stomach by modern standards, but honestly it is not much different than the way members of the military are treated (source: I served five years enlisted in the US Navy).

The problem is that you can't separate the economic from the social---even a mutually beneficial transaction can have negative social externalities like undermining the political (and then the economic) power of a whole class of workers or potentially even undermining the individual capacity for independence of the individual involved on a psychological level.

The philosopher Debra Satz's book "Why Some Things Should Not be for Sale" has a great section on bonded labor that captures some of these consequences.

(I think the military isn't a good analogy because the public at large affords military personnel a special kind of respect that counteracts these social externalities.)

Yes, but then you should apply political pressure to better the US army, not go "welp, let's give everybody that experience".

I am not sure why that needs spelling out, but social issues are actually not resolved by making them a suffering contest.

Can you point to where I said “welp let’s give everybody that experience”? I was attempting to give a nuanced view but I guess nobody in this thread has any interest in nuance. My mistake.

By what definition? In the lambda school case you only pay back if you’re in a job that pays >50k/year, it’s a percentage of income, and it’s capped at 30k. Indentured servitude requires you to do basically anything for your indenture holder for no pay until you’ve paid it back. Student loans that cannot be discharged regardless of circumstance sounds far more like indentured servitude than an ISA to me so “not really” I think is a fair assessment.

Yes. I'm not sure how making the payback variable as a function of salary up to some cap is something unacceptable while a fixed payment obligation is a run of the mill loan.

At least in the version that existed in early America indentured servitude allowed for coercion and there was no bankruptcy option. Whereas in modern law specific performance for personal service contracts are strictly forbidden and bankruptcy is out there.

But student loans are exempt from bankruptcy, so in a way that particular investment in future earnings is a bit outside the modern protections.

The grandparent’s post “this” referred to the personal equity proposal, not students loans.

That said:

- I agree that student loans ought to be dischargable in bankruptcy (indeed I think the government should have nothing to do or say with them at all)

- I still don’t think they are reasonably referred to as “literally indentured servitude”, though one step closer

We got rid of debtor's prisons too, which is an improvement.

> a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another for a specified time especially in return for payment of travel expenses and maintenance.

This != That

No, by definition it is not, because the person is still earning a salary.

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