[mindslight]

Computer Science itself is rife with reinvention of its own concepts, so I don't think wider reading would change much.

Furthermore, banksters aren't coming up with these mortal-debt schemes due to not knowing history or ethics, but because owning people is quite lucrative.

As far as mortal debt schemes go, this actually seems nicer than student loans denominated in straight dollars. But of course it will be nicer to start off - longer term it will probably converge on a similar income siphon as traditional loans, just with a nice bonus payday when one of the subjects makes it big.