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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

That isn't the meat of my argument. I think it is much more likely that they'll come up with new legislation that is actually targeted at the problem, if they don't just forgive the debt. I think people are more likely to do the democracy stuff - voting for and influencing representatives who have plans to fix this - if they still see it as a problem to be solved, rather than something that doesn't affect them due to their debt having been forgiven already.

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I'm not sure how one thinks "actually targeting the problem" will be easier than forgiving loans. What do you think would actually fix the problem? Because, I think it would require a large subsidized, if not nationalized, public university system with free tuition or near-free tuition. And that's a much bigger task than forgiving loans.

I don't think it will be easier! But I don't think forgiving the loans is harmless, I think it makes the problem worse. So I don't support doing an easier thing that makes the problem both worse and also even harder politically to solve than it already was.

I think there are a number of policies to consider, all the way from beefing up the current programs - like income based repayment, public service forgiveness, and grants - to regulatory price controls, to your idea of nationalizing essentially the current system, to rethinking the whole concept of what college is for and who should go.

There are a bunch of different things I might support depending on the details, but just "I dunno, do a one time blanket forgiveness and nothing else I guess?" really ain't it.

I’m flabbergasted at the reasoning here, I see it the exact opposite. Give people breathing room and then they’ll be able to do the democracy stuff.

(Aside: You've started every reply you've written to me with some sort of "I don't even know what to say" or "I'm flabbergasted". I'm not sure if this is just a rhetorical tick you have, or if it means that maybe you should sit with what you've read for a bit and think it over until you know what to say or are no longer flabbergasted by it. I don't find what you're saying flabbergasting, I just disagree. I think you could perhaps reach a similar place with what I'm saying if you take some time to think about it.)

People don't need "breathing room" to care about a political issue. People care about issues that are affecting them. You clearly care about this issue because (from your comments today) it is clearly affecting you. You aren't going to suddenly care more about whether college administrators are or aren't incentivized to raise the costs of college after you've been freed from the clutches of your student debt and have more room to breathe. You'll move on to caring about the next thing that is affecting your life directly. That's not a criticism of you or anybody, it's just the natural reaction.

I’m done. You’re not engaging with what I was saying, and instead are talking down to me and others like we only care about ourselves. Please, please try to listen to the points people are making. Your entire first paragraph is literally gaslighting and talking down to me and others.

I have engaged you at every single point, and will continue to if you choose to continue making arguments. I have been listening to your points, but frankly so far they haven't been very good ones. I think what you're doing here is just throwing your hands up in frustration that not everyone just immediately agrees with what you believe to be the obvious conclusions here, rather than making convincing arguments for what you believe.

By my first paragraph, I assume you mean the parenthetical at the beginning? If so, that isn't what "gaslighting" means, and while I can see how you read it as talking down to you, it can't be talking down to anyone else, because it is solely responding to a particular style in a few comments you specifically have written.

You haven’t engaged me with research or data once, you just keep concern trolling. Please try to at least use something quantitative to backup your arguments

My argument isn't quantitative, it's predicting how the policy will impact incentives and thus peoples' future behavior. Incentives matter in policy construction, but not everything that matters can be put on a chart or in a table of numbers.

You post one article and claim it’s it’s “THE” study or data for hours and hours and post and reply constantly. Log off for a bit, take a break, it might do you some good.

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