People spending money that is not theirs on services they themselves will not receive will care about neither the quality nor the cost of those services. But this at its core is exactly what the government bureaucrats do. If you listened at all to great economists like Milton Friedman then it’d be obvious to you why government spending inevitably leads to lower quality and more expensive services than those provided by a free market through the private sector. Moreover, this spending is done by force, meaning the government is violating your individual autonomy (and the autonomy of every individual they tax to fund this program) by removing your right to decide how you spend your money on services you need. We as a society don’t generally view force as a legitimating factor. We view consent as a legitimating factor, and these goods and services are just that; goods and services. And, like every other good and service, the free market is a
solution to provide more variety of them at a variety of costs including ones affordable to you. There is a reason people choose to bring their kids to private school and many people who would otherwise choose to do so cannot because their income is taxed to fund public schooling.
The lesbian dance theory degree example is obviously an analogy to illustrate a bad investment and get you to understand the outrage of having to pay for someone else’s personal (bad) investments. 18 year olds are legally adults in the US and as adults they have the right to make decisions about their futures. But their inexperience does not absolve them of their responsibilities. And it’s not like they have to get a degree fresh out of high school either. They can choose to wait and watch the real world for a few years until they decide what they want to do with their lives. Stop infantilizing them.
If you’re asking me my opinion on discharging debts, I disagree with the concept in principle for the same reason as the original occupy wall street protesters. Businesses that fail, even if they are big, should not be bailed out at the taxpayers expense. Bad investments should fail; that is the risk you wager when you agreed to play that game. You don’t get to turn around and privatize the gains and socialize the losses. We live in a society.