Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

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I somewhat agree, but it turns out the details are extremely tricky.

For example, how do you prevent people from finishing college, immediately declaring bankruptcy, and then getting a high-paying job with their degree? Unlike a house or car, the education can't be repossessed so the holder retains all of the upside.

It would be the ultimate financial hack to get a medical degree, declare bankruptcy, and then immediately start practicing once the bankruptcy went through.

So obviously there would need to be a lot of protections against abuse. Perhaps a provision that the student loan could only be discharged after a protracted period (many years) of too-low income.

Ironically, there's a huge resistance to this idea from within humanities departments. They fear (rightly so) that such provisions would make it harder to get loans for humanities degrees because they pay significantly less. I don't think that's really a bad thing, but you'll find some outspoken arguments against this from people in the academic world.

You can't. What you're describing is textbook indentured servitude, which is a form of slavery.

If you're suggesting that some things are only possible to fund through slavery, may I humbly submit that slavery is still wrong, and things which cannot be funded except through slavery have no right to existence?

Not absolutely every form of indentured servitude is wrong.

It is entirely possible to have fair deals where you get an education in exchange for X percent of the income you have over Y minimum, for Z years.

Yeah, see, I would personally contend that indentured servitude is ipso facto immoral, and so if your "fair deal" includes that, it is not actually fair.

Specifically, you're selling future labor in exchange for an asset that you can't immediately liquidate to pay off the debt. This is not acceptable, if the counterparty makes a profit from it. (If you could immediately liquidate it, at that point there would be no need to make recourse to your earning power)

> Yeah, see, I would personally contend that indentured servitude is ipso facto immoral, and so if your "fair deal" includes that, it is not actually fair.

And I personally wouldn't call a 10 year 0-10% cut of income "indentured servitude" so that's not a very useful way to figure things out.

> Specifically, you're selling future labor in exchange for an asset that you can't immediately liquidate to pay off the debt. This is not acceptable, if the counterparty makes a profit from it. (If you could immediately liquidate it, at that point there would be no need to make recourse to your earning power)

Doesn't the same thing happen if I use a loan to buy almost any product? As soon as it becomes mine, it becomes used, and liquidating it wouldn't be enough to pay off the loan. I don't think all those loans are immoral.

Is there a difference? Or do you think both are unacceptable?

And look, I'm fine with saying you could discharge this college revenue-repayment loan in bankruptcy if you were actually in need of doing so, but I'm trying to describe the kind of repayment terms where that would basically never be needed. If your income isn't above the threshold then you owe $0 and the loan goes away by itself after a few years.

> Is there a difference? Or do you think both are unacceptable?

Loans by themselves are acceptable; loans with interest are not, because you're making a profit from what could potentially be slavery.

A licit way to do it would be to have a purchase-repurchase agreement. I pay $5000 to "buy" a car, and I'm guaranteed to be able to sell it back for let's say $4000 a week later. That way, if I default on it, I can never end up in debt.

Loans backed by people's ability to earn income are a form of slavery, and earning interest off this is not licit.

Well if you think any loan with interest is unacceptable then I don't think there's any way to solve this.

If you want it to be easy to get the loan payments reduced or even cancelled when you're having money problems, then you need to make a profit off the people that do have plenty of money. And isn't that even better than returning what you got?

> Loans backed by people's ability to earn income are a form of slavery, and earning interest off this is not licit.

To my mind, the whole point of the minimum threshold for the type of loan I'm describing is so it can't be slavery. If you don't have lots of money, the debt just disappears. If you're wealthy... then you're wealthy, not a debt slave.

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