[adventured]

> the American (capitalist) system in which you need to pay huge amounts for education in order to have the mere chance to get a job that's above sustenace wage

You do realize that wasn't true until about 15 years ago, right? You should be asking what happened (hint: it wasn't Capitalism, it was the US Government's inflationary student loan program). Until the mid 1970s when the US Government nearly destroyed the dollar, you could pay for a Harvard education with a part time job. As recently as the late 1990s, the US had very little in the way outstanding student loans compared to the size of its median income (thus the epic student loans increase that everybody can't stop talking about, ie that's why it's a headline now, because it wasn't expensive before).

It should take you about 15 minutes to do some research and compare the price of a college education prior to the year 2000, versus incomes at the time. Pick any decade prior to 2000 and do the comparison. What happened after 2000? The Bush years wars & spending hammered the dollar, which also sparked the big commodity bubble.

College tuition & fees costs climbed 500% from ~1990 to ~2010. I wonder if that was spontaneously caused by Capitalism; you know, just out of the blue prices suddenly skyrocketed because of Capitalism; or if it was something the US Government did to cause it.

Another hint: how were college costs able to completely disregard income growth and all other restraints for two decades?

[frgtpsswrdlame]

The costs of university increase on a purely free-market basis because of incredibly expanding demand for a university education, now poor students can't afford to go to school. The government steps in and assures their loans so poor students can attend. Now since these loans are guaranteed capitalist institutions begin seeing just how much they can bilk students for and thus our dilemma. Our problem is the free market. Government intervention to this point has transformed one free-market problem (school only for well-to-do) into another (school for anyone but loaded with debt) because we haven't had enough government intervention. Just make it free and our problem is solved.

[adventured]

That's not what happened at all. The US Government didn't step in to assure the student loans of poor people. The US Government backed student loans for everyone, on a perpetually increasing basis.

You fail to address the most obvious problem with your claims:

How college costs were able to skyrocket in complete disregard to the ability to repay those loans. The lack of the ability to pay back a loan is a normal check against irresponsible lending, unless you have a printing press backing said loans and can afford to disregard defaults. The lack of responsible lending, courtesy of the US Government, is what enabled the universities to perpetually raise their costs against the lack of any economic restraints. You fail to recognize the broken core to the system: there were no cost inflation restraints, because the US Government made it possible for there to be none.

The fundamental you aren't dealing with, is what enabled the cost inflation to be so extreme, radically beyond any reasonable standards of lending or potential to repay.

The lack of a free market in education is precisely what caused the hyper cost inflation. The US Government created a system of lending backed by its ability to print dollars, which stands completely apart from normal economic reality.

Another hint: guess who is making nearly all the money off the student loans? Yep, the US Government. They're yielding tens of billions per year in interest profit, courtesy of their ability to magically make dollars appear and to put an entire generation into vast debt. The US Govt is earning about 20 times what the private sector is making off of student loans.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

No, I think you're not really grasping what I'm saying. Here:

(1) College is cheap, only the few and the wealthy go.

(2) More people start to attend college.

(3) Supply and demand kick in, increasing costs, ensuring that still only the few and the wealthy go to college.

(4) The government doesn't like that poor people aren't able to afford college so they guarantee student loans.

(5) Poor people can go to school now, but price spirals out of control.

This is my timeline.

>The lack of the ability to pay back a loan is a normal check against irresponsible lending, unless you have a printing press backing said loans and can afford to disregard defaults.

You're totally right. The problem here is that it's "irresponsible lending" to give a student loan to a poor student, a black student, and especially say a poor, black student who wants to study history. We as a society though want poor students to get more education and we as a society don't want certain fields limited to just those who are already rich. So we guarantee student loans. Then a bunch of capitalists see that we've broken the loan system, pull out their Gordon Gekko hats and start robbing us blind.

>The lack of a free market in education is precisely what caused the hyper cost inflation. The US Government created a system of lending backed by its ability to print dollars, which stands completely apart from normal economic reality.

The lack of a free market in education is precisely what gave lots of kids who would never have otherwise had the opportunity to attend college that chance.

>Another hint: guess who is making nearly all the money off the student loans? Yep, the US Government. They're yielding tens of billions per year in interest profit, courtesy of their ability to magically make dollars appear and to put an entire generation into vast debt. The US Govt is earning about 20 times what the private sector is making off of student loans.

Sure, I don't like this either. College should be free.

[ue_]

The very fact that we are talking about student loans, inflation, destroying the dollar and income (wage-labour) means that we are talking about capitalism; though other actors within a capitalist economy by virtue of having more military or property power may influence a capitalist economy, it does not change the fact that it is a capitalist system nevertheless.

Nowhere did I claim that "free market" policies led up to this point, nor did I claim that government intervention didn't lead up to this point. However I did claim it was due to the capitalist mode of production and so far I haven't been refuted on that point.

[adventured]

> The very fact that we are talking about student loans, inflation, destroying the dollar and income (wage-labour) means that we are talking about capitalism

We're talking about government abuse of and intervention into a former Capitalist economy (which is now a heavily regulated, heavily taxed mixed economy). The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades. One quick check at the regulation count, the taxation system, the government involvement in every industry and segment, easily makes that point (further, take a look at the expansion of those things over the last 50 years). Where's the free market part?

[etplayer]

>The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades.

Where exactly did GP claim that it is? And why is regulation incompatible with a capitalist system? You are making the confusion that capitalism means "free market", when it doesn't.

[adventured]

Capitalism is inseparable from a free market system. They are in fact the same thing and have been regarded as such for a century across all the writings of every modern proponent of free market economics. From Hayek to Mises to Friedman.

To the extent you have regulation, is the extent to which you lack a Capitalist economy. All systems opposite to Capitalism make use of extreme State control of the economy through various regulatory means. Whether we're talking rudimentary Socialism or its derivatives, including Fascism and Communism. It's an inversion. You can either have market-based economic levers or you can have State levers, or you can mix them and get a mixed economy to the extent you do so. Regulation is antithesis to Capitalism because it imposes State control over the economy. The more regulation you add, the less market freedom you must inherently have; the regulation removes possible action and decision making by free actors in the economy, it places those decisions into the hands of the State (ie out of the bounds of Capitalism to dictate).

[etplayer]

>Capitalism is inseparable from a free market system.

No, it's not; there exists market Socialism, for example. There also exists mutualism. I don't know where you're getting this from other than the idea that authors in favour of capitalism also tend to prefer free market economics.

>Whether we're talking rudimentary Socialism or its derivatives, including Fascism and Communism.

Communism is actually the complete lack of state control but also the lack of commodity production and therefore the market.

>Regulation is antithesis to Capitalism because it imposes State control over the economy.

You have still failed to explain why lack of regulation is central to capitalism other than to name Hayek, Mises and Friedman who were in favour of free-market capitalism. Other authors who sought to describe capitalism prior to them didn't include "free market" as a core principle of capitalism.

There is no denying that the epitome of capitalist production is completely unencumbered by a State, but there is also no denying that the state must intervene in a capitalist economy to protect property rights on a large scale. There is also the idea that the the State itself cannot be a capitalist actor which is totally false; we see the State engaging in the employment of wage-labour and selling on the national and international market. This makes the state as capitalist as Microsoft or Google.