[goodrubyist]

It's quite unfortunate that so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance (Ron Wyden and Ran Paul come to mind). This issue is without doubt way more important than most issues politicians choose to demagogue about ("cancel college debt", e.g. Sigh).

[dataflow]

> This issue is without doubt way more important than most issues politicians choose to demagogue about ("cancel college debt", e.g. Sigh).

I feel like if you asked people whether it's more important to them to cancel college debt than to end mass surveillance, the results would not tilt toward the latter.

[Lammy]

Do you think more people would gain awareness of issues like mass surveillance if they didn't have to constantly worry about subsistence? I think they would.

[brighton36]

I think we're just going to have to pay for privacy. If it's important, and scarce, it will be up for sale. All societal social values and morals will be commoditized and assessed for purchase. No one is smart enough to know why this is antithetical to their society's interests.

[mehrdadn]

More, yes, but it's not at all difficult for me to imagine it still ending up being a small chunk of the population anyway.

[dragonwriter]

> I feel like if you asked people whether it's more important to them to cancel college debt than to end mass surveillance, the results would not tilt toward the latter.

The latter is more important, the former more urgent.

[randomchars]

Well, more proof that demagoguery works as usual.

[phobosanomaly]

People are buried in enough crippling debt that keeps them from leading a life that has enough breathing room to pontificate about the implications of a the government reading their web-browsing history.

If you're worried about paying rent, and whether you have enough in the bank to replace the bald tires on your '97 Civic, are you really going to riot in the streets over the government collecting some data that they will never use against a tiny cog in the machine such as yourself?

[vorpalhex]

> People are buried in enough crippling debt...

I'm assuming you're speaking about college debt specifically, but people holding student loan debt are typically:

+ Higher class

+ Opted into taking the debt

+ Have enough income to not qualify for debt relief

+ 20% of that debt is held by people with graduate or doctoral degrees

It would take somewhere on the lines of $1 trillion dollars to cancel that debt (so that's money that can't be used for increasing healthcare, public utilities, issuing new student loans, etc). Oh and college prices would probably increase as a result - why worry about taking a loan if there's a chance the government is going to cancel it?

[phobosanomaly]

Why worry about giving people healthcare if they're just going to use it as an excuse to smoke, and drink, and eat chocolate bars all day?

Why worry about providing people with public utilities if they're just going to use it to waste electricity playing video games and leaving the living room lights on?

I understand your cynicism, but I believe we are trapped in a local minimum where people are stuck having taken out loans for an education their parents led them to believe would help them, but which turned out to be not so useful from an employment perspective.

I choose to believe that education from good, public institutions should be encouraged as much as possible, in as many different fields as people have interest in for the overall benefit and competitiveness of the country. But I don't believe that it should trap people in debt situations that then hamstring their ability to use that education in a creative, and entrepreneurial way.

We have to move everybody that is stuck now past the sticking point, and then, as you pointed out, find ways to eliminate people from getting stuck in the first place.

I kept it cheap by going to community college and transferring to a state school. Let's get that more normalized because I paid the same amount for my first two years of college what I then paid for one quarter at the university.

There are better ways of doing things, and there are institutions in place to facilitate a better way. We just have to move past this and tweak the system a bit.

[HexagonalKitten]

I'd be all for university debt cancellation if it was in the form of universities not getting paid. Because as you say, they provided a shitty product. And as a parent poster said, if they get paid they'll just keep or raise rates so this is the best way to correct the root problem as well.

But I'm against debt cancellation if it just means that we get to pay for their shitty schooling, and we both know this is what they're pushing for. Increasing the tax burden on those who didn't get loans and didn't go to fancy schools.

Why shouldn't they just be allowed to go bankrupt? Then people who made bad loans would suffer. And they wouldn't be able to buy TVs and other crap on credit for a few years which for this specific demographic, might be a lesson.

[vorpalhex]

The issue isn't _really_ the students. Sure if suddenly all college students made aggressive financial choices we'd be better off, but really it's the more expensive universities themselves.

They know what kinds and amounts of student loans are available and they raise their prices based on that. If they can sell getting even more expensive student loans (knowing they have no risk and that you can't exactly get a refund on a degree..) then they'll keep raising prices.

And if all of these costs were resulting in the greatest workers ever who were geniuses in mathematics, maybe it'd be worth it right. Except generally it's not, these costs are going to administrators and fluff instead of things that help students or improve their outcomes.

[randomchars]

As someone living in an ex-soviet controlled state, I find it very offensive that you think the state won't ever use the data against a little cog.

They do. We even have a museum about the terror commited against the everyday tiny little cogs.

[Dobby2020]

These KGB-stories museums are the core of the post-soviet-post-modern-neo-liberal identity that is one and only one existential reason for most of such countries. A holy churches of new-old faith which suddenly obsolete under the facts that the whole world is actually a huge Goolag or its far-close derivatives.

[siliconmountain]

I read your message a few times, but your concatenation of concepts and words for no apparent reason makes this entirely not understandable. If you're going to make things up, at least explain yourself.

[Dobby2020]

In very simple words, it doesn't matter what color of the discourse-wrapper the shit of the reality is packed as it doesn't change the taste at all.

[phobosanomaly]

I'm sorry that you're offended.

I'm talking about the United States in 2020, not the former Soviet Bloc.

Our threat vector is local police, not the state surveillance apparatus.

Don't know if you happened to catch it on the news, but we burned down a bunch of stuff, and millions of us marched in the streets over it this past summer.

[randomchars]

> I'm sorry that you're offended.

No no, I'm sorry, it was not the best choise of words. It's more that I'm perplexed by your naivety.

You freely admin that the police is the enemy of the people, the very police that's supposed to protect people. Now what makes you think that the organizations whose goal is to protect the state, and not the people would be any more benevolent?

[xyzzyz]

> but we burned down a bunch of stuff, and millions of us marched in the streets over it this past summer.

Sounds more like you are the threat vector, with the whole burning things down thing and stuff.

[bayindirh]

In my uneducated guess, it can be a sense of immediacy too. They can feel the college debt, but not the mass surveillance.

People think that they have nothing to worry if they do nothing wrong, which is not correct obviously.

So the issue of surveillance is very hard to understand at once. On the other hand, they can see their college debt and feel their effects first hand.

A prioritization similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

[leppr]

This prioritization of issues (where for a rational actor, economics will most often be at the top), is why democratic republic systems don't allow democracy to permeate less "important" issues.

Citizens don't get to vote on how much surveillance they want, they chose from 2 big bundles of unrelated positions, with surveillance-related positions buried within. The 2 parties might both have unpopular opinions on surveillance, the issue is comparatively not pressing enough to have any influence on their candidacy.

[bayindirh]

So, can we say that we hit the scalability limits of indirect democracy?

[leppr]

I think it can be satisfactory under certain conditions. City-scale works because people can vote with their feet (the binary Keynesian beauty contest has an escape hatch), diversity is somewhat limited, and there is somewhat more accountability (the mayor lives in the same city, walks the same streets as its inhabitants).

But it's certainly not democratic at the scale of a country-continent such as the USA. Their citizens don't have the freedom to vote with their feet (even less than other countries due to the unique tax on citizenship that follows them around the world), and city/countryside people have opposing opinions on many important issues.

[runawaybottle]

College-debt cancellation is currently being discussed on a shallow level, so it’s easier to discuss. Mass surveillance needs some in-depth thought that requires a principled approach to simple questions like ‘if you are not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?’. Most people can’t make it past that one point, so it’s an intellectually stunted topic at the moment.

If we sat here and said we will cancel college debt, refund everyone that actually paid for college their money, refund those who paid their college loans, then refund everyone that went to college ever with an inflation-adjusted amount, then we come to the core of the issue of the price of education, and what is fair when you give amnesty to one group of college goers but not others. The true debate is about fairness, and on a technical level, what is affordable, and lastly who bears responsibility of giving and taking loans. Anyone truly ready to discuss this in-depth? Or do we just want to say the rent is too damn high?

[lotsofpulp]

The whole purpose of student loans is to allow politicians to simultaneously claim low taxes AND assistance to students.

Politician A says they will help students by funding higher education and lowering tuition, but will have to implement higher taxes than politician B who says they will help students by enabling students to borrow unlimited amounts of money from the federal government.

Politician B will win the election every time, because voters want lower taxes more than helping those below them in the socioeconomic order. Higher education facilities will raise prices because people that work at those facilities like more money than less money. The customers have infinite amounts of money due to being able to borrow as much as they want, and don’t have fully formed brains nor the requisite education or guidance to be able to calculate return on investment to make an informed decision.

[frockington1]

And the free money encourages people to go to college who probably should not. It's a predatory loan disguised as a handout to the poor. Nothing sets people up for a lifetime of failure quicker than $120k private school soft science degree

[upbeat_general]

I don’t think you fully understand what having large student loans can mean for a person. Sure not everyone has 100k+ in loans but either way it’s not irrational to be concerned about immediate financial issues as opposed to mass surveillance. Not everyone has a stem degree as a result of their loans and plenty of people with degrees struggle to make ends meet

[raxxorrax]

Is there a mechanism for insolvency for debts this large in the US?

I believe I would have skipped higher education if such debt would have been the result. I imagine these policies came from a time where a degree was sure to net you a well paid job. Seems unfitting for todays time especially since the logistical problems of education are irrelevant with modern communication infrastructure.

[_trampeltier]

No, there is no insolvency for student debt. In some states you even lose your driving licence if you don't pay.

[vonmoltke]

That's not true. It's hard, but not impossible as many people think: https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/797330613/myth-busted-turns-o...

[Lammy]

It's been a progression to nondischargeability over a few decades.

- 1978: Student debt first made nondischargeable, for loans less than five years old at time of filing: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-92/pdf/STATUTE-9...

  § 523. Exceptions to discharge
  (a) A discharge under section 727, 1141, or 1328(b) of this title
    does not discharge an individual debtor from any debt—
  (8) to a governmental unit, or a nonprofit institution of higher 
    education, for an educational loan, unless— 
    (A) such loan first became due before five years before
      the date of the filing of the petition; or
    (B) excepting such debt from discharge under this paragraph will
      impose an undue hardship on the debtor and the debtor's dependents; or

- 1990: nondischargeability waiting period was later extended to seven years: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-104/pdf/STATUTE-...

  § 3621.
  Section 523(a)(8) of title 11, United States Code, is amended— 
  (1) by striking "for an educational" and all that follows
    through "unless", and inserting the following: "for an educational
    benefit overpayment or loan made, insured or guaranteed
    by a governmental unit, or made under any program
    funded in whole or in part by a governmental unit or nonprofit
    institution, or for an obligation to repay funds received as an
    educational benefit, scholarship or stipend, unless"; end
  (2) by amending subparagraph (A) to read as follows:
    "(A) such loan, benefit, scholarship, or stipend overpayment
    first became due more than 7 years (exclusive of any applicable
    suspension of the repayment period) before the
    date of the filing of the petition; or".

- 1998: waiting period removed completely, making government-insured student loans nondischargeable: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-105publ244/pdf/PLAW...

  § 971. NONDISCHARGEABILITY OF CERTAIN CLAIMS FOR EDUCATIONAL
    BENEFITS PROVIDED TO OBTAIN HIGHER EDUCATION.
  (a) AMENDMENT.—Section 523(a)(8) of title 11, United States
    Code, is amended by striking "unless—" and all that follows through
    "(B) excepting such debt" and inserting "unless excepting such debt".

- 2005: Nondischargeability expanded to include private student loans as well: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-109publ8/pdf/PLAW-1...

  § 220. NONDISCHARGEABILITY OF CERTAIN EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS AND LOANS.
    Section 523(a) of title 11, United States Code, is amended
  by striking paragraph (8) and inserting the following:
    "(8) unless excepting such debt from discharge under this
  paragraph would impose an undue hardship on the debtor
  and the debtor's dependents, for—
      "(A)(i) an educational benefit overpayment or loan made, insured,
    or guaranteed by a governmental unit, or made under any program
    funded in whole or in part by a governmental unit
    or nonprofit institution; or
      "(ii) an obligation to repay funds received as an educational
      benefit, scholarship, or stipend; or
      "(B) any other educational loan that is a qualified education
      loan, as defined in section 221(d)(1) of the Internal Revenue
      Code of 1986, incurred by a debtor who is an individual;".

- …and, because I was curious what counts as "qualified": https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2009-title26/pdf/...

  (1) Qualified education loan
    The term "qualified education loan" means any indebtedness
  incurred by the taxpayer solely to pay qualified
  higher education expenses—
      (A) which are incurred on behalf of the taxpayer,
    the taxpayer’s spouse, or any dependent of the taxpayer
    as of the time the indebtedness was incurred,
      (B) which are paid or incurred within a reasonable period
    of time before or after the indebtedness is incurred, and
      (C) which are attributable to education furnished during
    a period during which the recipient was an eligible student.

  Such term includes indebtedness used to refinance indebtedness
  which qualifies as a qualified education loan.
  The term "qualified education loan" shall not include any
  indebtedness owed to a person who is related (within the
  meaning of section 267(b) or 707(b)(1)) to the taxpayer
  or to any person by reason of a loan under any qualified
  employer plan (as de-fined in section 72(p)(4))
  or under any contract referred to in section 72(p)(5).

[Lammy]

At least that last "shall not include any indebtedness owed to a person who is related to the taxpayer" part is a pretty sweet deal if you:

- Have a family

- Have a family that have money

- Have a family that have money and are willing/able to loan or give you some of it.

[mehrdadn]

It might work, but I'm not sure this is proof of that.

Say you're currently in $30k college debt. You're basically being asked to pay $30k to protect your privacy. Would you pay that? Is it irrational to reject it?

[randomchars]

I've got student loans myself, quite a lot. However when I asked for them I made sure that the profession I choose is profitable enough that I will be able to repay them.

I'd never ask other people to repay it for me, not would I ask my government. I'm an adult and take responsibility for my actions.

[Lammy]

I'd wonder if the same government that's willing/able to spy on me are also willing/able to influence relative success of certain industries or even specific success of certain companies.

How much of my career decision would truly be mine if several of my possibilities say "poverty subsistence" or "early death" and I have to accept that or toss those possibilities out?

[officeplant]

And I did well enough in school to get scholarships and avoid college debt. Congrats we both beat the system currently destroying thousands of students. That doesn't mean we should avoid fixing it.

[HexagonalKitten]

"Fixes" that are moral hazards often don't fix anything.

The schools wasted everyone's time and money, from inflated rates to useless courses. If anyone should eat the debt, it's them.

[kenneth]

Which is precisely what's wrong with neo-liberalism these days. A massive lack of rationality.

Cancelling college debt is about as screwed up an idea as one can come up with. It rewards exactly the wrong behavior, and is subsidized by those most deserving of a reward. Those who rack up unsustainable debt, picking expensive schools to earn degrees the market doesn't value, then go on to not repay those debts stand to gain the most from this. Meanwhile, those who take personal responsibility and sacrifice to make their college education sustainable — who went to cheaper colleges, who worked their way through it, who sacrificed their lifestyle post-graduation to get their debts paid off — are subsidizing the cost of that giveaway. It's a massive transfer of wealth from the responsible to the irresponsible.

[arrozconcosas]

This. If you can cancel college debt, colleges will more willingly dump piles of debt onto their students as well. It will also fuel the soaring cost of education to go even higher.

The problem is that debt financing is given to people who never should have gotten it in the first place. You should not give loans to such bad investments, not pay off the bad investments while allowing continued issuance of debt.

[blackrock]

If they cancel college debts, then can I get a refund for having paid my college debt!

[frockington1]

I better get reparations for the full amount paid if the the government cancels all student debt.

[Hoboburger]

Governments forgiving student loans doesn't seem very neoliberal to me. In fact I'd say it's pretty much the opposite of neoliberalism's free market approach.

[vonmoltke]

I's say the government issuing that debt in the first place is already counter to neoliberalism.

[bitcharmer]

>so few lawmakers take lead on opposing mass surveillance

There is even a bigger problem underneath it - US government institutions were also proven (on numerous occasions) to unlawfully spy on citizens without any repercussions.

No amount of law will rectify the issue unless the law gets enforced.

[colordrops]

How is this any different from a totalitarian state?

[therockspush]

I think Inverted Totalitarianism explains it better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

[phobosanomaly]

It doesn't actually affect the daily life of the vast majority of Americans in a way that visibly alters the trajectory of their life to a degree that they care enough to get upset about it.

The CIA isn't dropping-in to ship Fred down the street off to a reeducation camp for committing thoughtcrime.

Cops might shoot you for reaching into the glove compartment for your insurance and registration during a traffic stop over a broken taillight though. So, people were pretty willing to riot in the streets. Because it actually affects them in a meaningful way (at least the way they see it).

[rayiner]

It’s completely different?

> adjective relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.

The word “totalitarian” has a meaning—the root “total” reflects the intrusion of government and enforcement of behavioral norms in every facet of life.

Even snooping on the content of everyone’s calls, which the US never did, wouldn’t make it a “totalitarian state.” Snooping in everyone’s calls and prosecuting everyone who said anything bad about the President would be closer to the real meaning of the word.

[Lammy]

  "of or relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)"

Is it only "total" if it's explicit visible control of some aspect of my life? An even more effective way to control my life would be to control the set of possibilities that come to my mind for a particular decision, because then I'll probably think the result of that artificially-constrained choice was my idea and may even fight to defend my choice from people who picked a different iOS/Android, Xbox/Playstation, PC/Mac, Reddit/Instagram than me.

[refurb]

The fact we’re here freely discussing it is probably a big hint we don’t live in a totalitarian state?

[coliveira]

Not only that, but whistleblowers have been severely persecuted and punished.

[phobosanomaly]

I agree, and I want to rant it out a bit further.

People make a lot of noise about the Second Amendment, but, what, they gonna shoot down a predator drone with their semi-auto AR-15? They gonna stop a SWAT team from disappearing them at 3am? They gonna be able to lead a decent life if all of their bank accounts get frozen? Local police departments acquiring armored vehicles and driving around wearing tactical gear are slowly morphing into a network of sketchy paramilitary forces.

Whistleblowers, however, really are on the front-lines of protecting us from actual, meaningful government corruption, overreach, and misconduct. They're what head-off 1984 before it turns into 1984.

If you have to worry about stockpiling ammunition in your basement, things have already gone way too far. Whistleblowers and the press are mechanism by which we don't get to that point.

[base698]

In some civil wars it was neighbor vs neighbor. In the Lebanese civil war people were pulled out of cabs and shot. This wasn't the state you have to worry about.

How would you compare the success of guerilla war in the last few decades against larger powers?

[phobosanomaly]

What a wonderful point.

Guerilla warfare is asymmetric warfare fought by a small minority against a more powerful enemy. It typically emerges in situations like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where you have a large, technologically advanced invading force that you are resisting. In the United States, there is very low risk of an exogenous actor occupying US soil, so we don't really have to worry about that.

Rather, we have to worry about our own government, and our best option is to take full advantage of our democratic system to head tyranny off at the pass.

Lebanon was a Civil War in the context of a failed state. The state no longer had a monopoly on the use of violence. A more recent analogy you could draw that would be more apropos would perhaps be Mexico where large swathes of the country are outside of state control, and rather in the hands of transnational criminal organizations.

I would again, argue that we should worry about preventing our country from becoming a failed state. The effort of preparing for the worst case scenario could perhaps be better spent through political engagement and activism to ensure that our country does not reach the point of being a failed state.

As you see right now, the current presidential administration is in the process of attempting a coup. It is not the lone citizen with an AR-15 that has prevented it. It is our institutions. What stands between the current administration staying in office for the next four years in full defiance of the voters as they would very much like to do? It's our institutions, including the whistleblowers, the free press, the judiciary, congress, state legislatures, and a military with a good head on its shoulders.

In fact, I have hundreds of rounds of 7.62x39 in my garage and a few thousand of 9mm. But, I have it because it's cheap in bulk, not because I have any aspirations to shoot another human being in any conceivable scenario. I believe in the strong institutions of my country, rather than my ability to murder my fellow Americans.

I bear no ill will, however, towards those who choose to 'trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' I only ask that they consider giving their time to mending the patchwork of our society rather than simply preparing for when it rips.

[brundolf]

I was with you until the last line. It takes either incredible ignorance or incredible callousness to suggest that the crushing, impossible-to-pay debt hanging over tens of millions of Americans is a less of an immediate problem than web surveillance.

[SpaceRaccoon]

Loans should not be federally guaranteed. Let them default.

[xyzzyz]

They shouldn’t, but it’s too late, they already are. If they default now, it will be one of the most regressive wealth transfer in history, with tens of millions of college graduates, most of whom having good jobs and no problem paying off their student debt (which on average is on the order of a price of a good new car, which plenty of college graduates do draw additional loans on) being the beneficiaries. It would be horrendous policy built upon a terrible one.

[amanaplanacanal]

Better to just allow those loans to be discharged in bankruptcy the way they used to be. The great majority would still be paid back, but those for whom it really is crushing would get relief.

[xyzzyz]

For those for whom it is really crushing there are plenty of relief available, most importantly income based repayment program. I simply don’t see why allowing bankruptcy, which is redistribution favoring college graduates, is needed.

[amanaplanacanal]

The same reason we allow other debts to be discharged. Unless you think that college loans should be privileged for some reason. Or unless you are against the idea of personal bankruptcy completely.

[Can_Not]

Yeah, that curveball just seemed extremely partisan, divisive, off-topic, possibly with intent to derail.

[rayiner]

> In fact, “one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers “in a specified foreign country” had visited “a single, identified U.S. web page.”

Is this “mass surveillance?”

[peterkelly]

It's running a query over a database that mass surveillance systems have already compiled.

[rayiner]

No, read the actual correspondence. It’s clearly talking about FISA orders that compel ISPs to produce records: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wyden...

Even civil litigation allows you to compel ISPs to produce data based on targeted searches.

[Can_Not]

> mass surveillance vs cancel college debt

This dichotomy sounds completely made up, is there a basis for implying pro free college politicians are quiet about mass surveillance?

[rplst8]

Don't forget Russ Feingold. The only original vote against the Patriot Act - and who lost in the 2010 mid-term while the act was extended/reauthorized in 2011.

[tsjq]

Why not an "and" ?

[nerdponx]

Canceling > $1 trillion in debt isn't exactly a small issue either.

[raxxorrax]

Letting young people shoulder such a sum sounds just insane to be honest.

[rplst8]

About 43 million people in the US hold that debt collectively. That's an average of $23,000 per person. The median is likely much lower as many doctors, lawyers, and other post-grads have $100-300k in debt.

I don't think that it's an arduous sum at all. I came from a working class family and I had nearly twice that amount ~$40,000 when I got out of college in 2001. I set up a payment plan and paid it off with about 5-6% interest.

[hue3]

The good ol’ classic “if I did it, anyone can do”. Funny you say you got out of college in 2001, when the entire global and domestic political-economic scenario were different and the social value of a degree was much higher than today.

[raxxorrax]

You can have both, why play these issues against each other? That isn't helpful at all.

[eeZah7Ux]

A whole, big comment thread all based upon a logical fallacy of whataboutism.