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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.