[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.

[phobosanomaly]

If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

[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.

[phobosanomaly]

I think it depends heavily on the system. For example, the Cal State system (largest public university system in the world) is pretty darn affordable if you're paying in-state tuition and commuting from home. Cal State San Bernardino doesn't have a whole lot of fluff. Just a bare-bones commuter school that gets the job done. Excellent value.

The UCs go up in price, but they're also literally world-class research institutions.

Let's focus on funneling more people through a community college/Cal State type system where they're graduating with a reasonable education that helps contribute to a well-educated and intelligent society, while not saddling people with monumental amounts of debt. And if they choose to continue their education and become specialists, they can go to grad school at a larger research university. I'm pretty sure that's what the CC/Cal State/UC system was originally intended to be. We've just sort of strayed from that path.

[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.

[ChrisRR]

I noticed the same thing on one of their now flagged comments. It's like there's some list of words and metaphors that conspiracy theorists love to employ

If they're trying to make a legitimate point, then it's been completely lost in all the waffle in the rest of the sentence.

[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?

[phobosanomaly]

Because organizations like the CIA have almost complete impunity to do whatever they want outside of the borders of the United States.

Why worry about some guy who lives in a shitty apartment in the San Fernando Valley and works at 7/11 when you can use all the toys in the arsenal to disappear clerics in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan without anyone saying as much as a word.

They get to play with Predator Drones. JSOC drops kill/capture teams out of HH-60 Pave Hawks with satellite and drone overwatch in Afghanistan. They can run snatch-and-grabs on the streets of Italy. Nobody even knows all of the off-the-books operations they're running in the horn of Africa.

The domestic United States is pretty boring by comparison. What, are they going to hassle the 7/11 guy? Why would they even bother? Congress would throw an absolute fit if they caught wind of it.

It's not because they can't. It's because they believe their own bullshit and get to do way too much cool Rambo/James Bond stuff outside of the United States.

Regarding the police. They're not exactly the enemy of the people. Our relationship with the cops is sort of complicated in this country. It's more that they're an institution with a lot of freedom and discretion, relatively poor training, low entrance standards, they have guns (and we have a lot of guns too), and they're loosely operated by a checkerboard of local and state agencies, rather than being a monolithic state entity.

A lot of the calls our police go on are mental health-related, and it burns a lot of cops out. Add that to poor de-escalation procedures and training, historical emphasis on policing of drug-related crimes in a way that that disproportionately affects minority communities, and well, there's trouble brewing.

If you ever get a chance (I know it's a cliche), but watch 'The Wire.' It's an HBO TV show that is pretty entertaining and does sort of go into a lot of the subtleties and problems of institutional policing in America.

I got a little sidetracked there, but in answer to 'what makes you think that the organizations whose goal is to protect the state, and not the people would be any more benevolent?' I say because it's more boring and congress would throw a fit. And I wouldn't say it's because they're benevolent per-se, but there is a LOT of believe-your-own-bullshit patriotic sentiment in this country that is hard to understate. We have an almost fetishistic worship of our military, and the notion that they 'fight for our freedom' and 'protect' us. That also carries over into the intelligence community to a great degree.

But, with the ongoing efforts to overturn the most recent presidential election, and the President's usage of federal resources in the summer protests, I have to say a lot of us are having to rethink a lot of stuff.

[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.

[phobosanomaly]

Ah, well, fair enough.

It's 'we' as in 'we' rowdy Americans getting out and exercising the First Amendment, with a minority of protestors committing some property crimes along the way. A common sentiment among those who committed those property crimes was 'no one listened to us before we started burning buildings,' and in this sense I have a sympathy for their claims. I don't believe that the 2020 protests will ultimately be found to have been on the wrong side of history.

My grandfather, as an old old man, still referred to MLK as the 'bane of the south.' In his time, the civil unrest of the Civil Rights movement was an unforgivable disruption to the lives of ordinary white folks, and...well, we all know 50 years later that this was such a trivial complaint in the face of the great progress made in healing a society still dealing with the ripple effects of a most monstrous institution, which our nation firmly embraced without hesitation upon its founding. We are still grappling with the fact that when my father was a boy African Americans had to enter through the 'colored' entrance, and the song 'Strange Fruit' was disturbingly still relevant. Remember Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. That's not that long ago. The wounds are still raw.

The vast majority of protestors were peaceful, and the point of the protests was that law enforcement should no longer be able to commit violence with impunity against those without a voice.

Many, including myself, have expressed sorrow at the damage done to small businesses over the course of the civil actions. But, it's good to see a robust and healthy willingness of the citizenry to turn out in order to oppose just the kind of targeting of the little guy that our friend from the former Soviet Bloc is concerned about.

[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.