# John Mace's (and others') opinion about societal fairness, 99%, etc **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 6, 2011, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215 "2011-12-06T01:44:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/101 "2011-12-06T23:22:04Z")
Outlawing derivatives and loan sharking pull money out of the financier-swindlers’ pockets. Or, rather, keep more from flowing in. Letting students be defaulted on and voided gets Sallie Mae off our backs. And it diminishes the incentive to pull this crap on the next generation. Training med students, half of whom are turned away by med schools, might help the middle class not _shrink relative to the economy._ Oh, wait, what were we talking about? > [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Evil Captor > I would have to say that, whatever it says about fairness, training people for four or eight years to develop skills in complex and difficult areas and then having them flip burgers hardly represents optimal use of society’s resources. It’s a waste, a stupid waste, like much of what occurs under capitalism. The point is not to find a use for a Soc degree, that’s a sunk cost. The point is not to throw someone massively into debt for pre-grad education & then shut him out of grad school, shut him out of the job market, and then blame him for “making a decision as an adult” when everybody knows he got on this ride as a youth and was told by society he needed that degree. Oh, but society doesn’t exist, right? We are all sea turtles, no parents, no peers, no schools, no authorities, no property–oh, wait, we have a society after all. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/102 "2011-12-06T23:24:24Z")
So, what is the solution? Make higher education free? Or, if someone chooses badly, to just wave away their debt and let them have a do-over? Lets say that you have nailed the problem on the head here…what’s your solution to this? -XT ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/103 "2011-12-06T23:26:01Z")
As far as creating jobs, first thing: we need to get rid of the Barack Obama types telling us we need more education to find work, and then making us pay an inflated price for it. Oh, there it is AGAIN! We need progressive taxes and redistribution of wealth. That can be public works, or if you’re really libertarian, a generous (\>10% of \*per capita \*GDP) negative income tax, and people can stimulate the economy as independent actors. To get out of a demand collapse, either will do. But the only way education saves us is by giving us the economic understanding to collectively change the system. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/104 "2011-12-06T23:28:35Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > So, what is the solution? Make higher education free? Or, if someone chooses badly, to just wave away their debt and let them have a do-over? Lets say that you have nailed the problem on the head here…what’s your solution to this? > > -XT I’m sorry, I may have been unclear above, with the double negative. Let student loans be forgiven in bankruptcy like all other debts. That’s a big part of the solution. Bring back legal caps on interest rates–all interest rates. That is too. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/105 "2011-12-06T23:31:48Z")
So what was the point? Not that you need to answer for **Evil Captor**. Perhaps we should wait until he comes back and answers for himself. He decried the situation where folks with 8 years of post-secondary education were flipping burgers. I guess I would ask 2 questions: 1. Just what percent of 8-year college people are we talking about? 2. Do we prevent them from studying “worthless” subjects? Do we use government money to try and utilize their skill, even though the market can’t find a user for it? What do we do, and why do we do it? OK, that was more than 2 questions. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/106 "2011-12-06T23:40:31Z")
I don’t see any reason to prevent people from studying sociology, and it’s not useless. I actually agree somewhat with Mr. Moto here. > [@Mr.Moto](#): > > That isn’t to say there aren’t massive problems here, though. For a couple generations now K-12 education results have stagnated, while college has until recently remained pretty uniformly accessible and of high quality. This has led to a creeping overcredentialization of society, where jobs that previously did not require a college degree first required them implicitly then explicitly, due at first to a large number of college grads and then by a basic distrust of the high school diploma as a credential. > > At the same time, the large number of students financing their education via grants and loans has led colleges to have little incentive to keep costs down. When I attended college in the late 1980s I lived in a dorm with no air conditioning, and the amenities on campus were much more basic than today. Students today have dormitories and student unions that are palatial by comparison, but costs have exploded far beyond inflation and they leave with debt unimaginable to my generation or my parents’. > > So I can understand recent grads in a soft economy being a little ticked off. I went through this to a degree myself - I left college before graduating in 1993, during a recession. I wound up joining the Navy rather than stand around doing nothing, and it took my some years to finish my degree. While I am happy with the outcome in my case I don’t pretend it was the way I wanted it at the time. It’s not just the “underwater basket weaving” courses that have become more expensive relative to inflation. It’s all of it. It doesn’t have to be this way. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/107 "2011-12-06T23:45:01Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I don’t see any reason to prevent people from studying sociology, and it’s not useless. > > I actually agree somewhat with Mr. Moto here.It’s not just the “underwater basket weaving” courses that have become more expensive relative to inflation. It’s all of it. It doesn’t have to be this way. And don’t you think the massive government intrusion into the market (in terms of student loan guarantees, for one thing) is a significant contributing factor to the rising cost of tuition? If everyone is getting poorer, or just treading water, how can an industry get away with raising prices higher than inflation? This is exactly the sort of thing that the government should stay out of. Directing money into particular areas is bound to cause a rise in price the same way that the mortgage deduction raises the price of homes. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/108 "2011-12-06T23:45:58Z")
And in fact, there is a larger societal problem. Our health care costs are too much for many Americans. College is a frivolity to the richer, and a necessity paid for by giant debt to the poorer. All of this comes back to a unified underlying cause: The distribution of wealth has changed. The stepping stones to success, the protection from harm, are being pulled away. Is this good or bad? If you believe in the process ethic, and not the result, you claim, “not enough information.” But if the process was always result-oriented (“educate the masses,” “a rising tide to lift all boats”) then surely results are a way to judge. Is it\* good\*, as a result, to push the middle-income American into debt and poverty? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/109 "2011-12-06T23:48:12Z")
I don’t care about “massive government intrusion into the market” any more than I care about “massive government intrusion into the transport network.” I care about results for the common person, not some fantastical idea of a perfect, elegant, consensual, natural economy. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/110 "2011-12-06T23:49:49Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I don’t care about “massive government intrusion into the market” any more than I care about “massive government intrusion into the transport network.” > > I care about results for the common person, not some fantastical idea of a perfect, elegant, consensual, natural economy. You don’t care what caused the problem? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/111 "2011-12-06T23:51:14Z")
You don’t care about the evident results of the system? \_ Of course I care what caused the problem. But when you use words like, “massive government intrusion into the free market,” you’re making some big assumptions about the correlation between freedom and success. You imply that you think the problem is something other than poverty and lack of opportunity. That the problem is process and not result. I don’t think the main problem #OWS is facing is that they are somehow prevented by the state from purchasing things. We do not lack a free market. We lack a good demand base. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/112 "2011-12-06T23:58:38Z")
Do you think the problem is a lack of free-market process? Do you think the problem is not the failure of proletarian incomes to keep up with inflation in prices of education and medical care? If it were demonstrated that all of this was the result of a free market in fact, would you say, OK, no problem then? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/113 "2011-12-07T00:03:04Z")
If something is broken, and you want to fix it, it helps to know why it’s broken. You can wrap duct tape around your leaking pipe, and that will “fix” things for awhile. But if you have a giant tree sending roots into your pipe, you have to stop the roots from getting there. Maybe we do need to allow student loans to be forgivable through bankruptcy just like other debt. Then the banks, and the government that guarantees those loans, won’t hand them out willy nilly like 0% down mortgages were handed out just a few years ago. That still isn’t going to help our hapless Sociology major get a job, but maybe it will make him think twice about going to college and/or majoring in Sociology in the first place. It moves us toward a market evaluation of the worth of college instead of a distorted one where banks can hand out money without worrying if it can be paid back or not. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/114 "2011-12-07T00:05:37Z")
And since I have called out student loan guarantees four times now, you know I think that government intrusion was ill-advised, and I have called to reverse it. Reverse student loan guarantees. End them. Forgive the debts. I don’t care about some larger theory of “gubmint bad.” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/115 "2011-12-07T00:06:56Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Do you think the problem is a lack of free-market process? I don’t think we have sufficiently defined the problem. > [@](#): > > Do you think the problem is not the failure of proletarian incomes to keep up with inflation in prices of education and medical care? Proletarian? What are we, in 1917 Russia? > [@](#): > > If it were demonstrated that all of this was the result of a free market in fact, would you say, OK, no problem then? Possibly. Again, let’s define what the problem is and go from there. ETA: It’s one thing to change bankruptcy laws and quite another to call for writing off the debt. It’s not like the repayment of that debt is going to come out of Mr. CEO’s salary. It will come out of increased cost levied on the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/116 "2011-12-07T00:27:23Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Let student loans be forgiven in bankruptcy like all other debts. > > That’s a big part of the solution. That would basically eliminate the student loan industry. It is very easy for a graduating student to just declare bankruptcy and wipe out his student loans. The student is young, hasn’t accumulated much baggage, and the bankruptcy would be a wise move, considering that in a few years the bankruptcy will not be counted against him in financial matters. The student loan people are not stupid. If they see that provision eliminated, the requirements for student loans will immediately tighten up. Either the student will have to show some collateral or parents will have to co-sign the loans (like they did before the no-wiping-of-loan-in-bankruptcy provision) etc. Is that what you want? ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/117 "2011-12-07T00:30:56Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Ah, I recall that argument. It was made quite often by the slave-holding South. Jobs exist, though there is sometimes a lot of competition. Nobody starves unless they manage to drink themselves to death. So if the alternative isn’t death, there isn’t coercion. I guess that makes you more moderate than some, who don’t think starvation is sufficient to count as coercion. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > So how, exactly, isn’t it free? Because you might no get what you want? If so, you have on a whim eradicated the very concept of freedom except through _death_. Nobody and nothing can ever be free of all limitations or consequences, and I can’t imagine any of the great liberal thinkers who would say that having real consequences is the same as lacking freedom. It isn’t free because we are all under pressures which are coercive. Now there are those whack jobs who throw up their hands and say the government is not to intervene at all to restrict the market, because that is restrictive of freedom. Or there are the majority of people who say it is beneficial, from both a moral and an pure economic level, that we allow the government to take some actions to reduce that degree of coercion. Through such measures as minimum wage laws and centralized unemployment insurance. While we accept we cannot remove all coercion, we think there are benefits to the government reducing it. There are benefits to society for decisions having real consequences. But there are also benefits for society and the individual for moderating those consequences. It isn’t that complicated to understand. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/118 "2011-12-07T00:38:31Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Sure, that’s possible. But… > I would say that the differences would be more likely to be political rather than economic. > > Jim Crow laws in the US certainly depressed black people’s earnings over their lifetimes. That was neither fair, balanced, nor just. But it has less to do with economics or capitalism, and more to do with political and social ideas. > > Capitalism would tend in some cases even to work against this. One driver behind segregation in the workplace was that blacks were willing to work for less, and were sometimes out-competing whites for jobs. Hence the push for segregation from white-dominated unions. And yet you refuse to see how capitalism and capitalists benefited from segregation. Segregation led to less powerful unions. A white-dominated union that placed a value on excluding black workers could be brought to accept lower wages than a fully unified union would. The threat of bringing in cheaper black workers would also be beneficial to the employers. To deny the importance of economics and capitalism to institutionalized racism is to fail to understand economics, capitalism, or political and social ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/119 "2011-12-07T00:42:17Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Or there are the majority of people who say it is beneficial, from both a moral and an pure economic level, that we allow the government to take some actions to reduce that degree of coercion. And the government can do this how? Through coercion. Kinda circular. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2011, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215/120 "2011-12-07T00:51:59Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > And the government can do this how? Through coercion. Kinda circular. Yes. It is by coercion. No problem with that. Even crazy right wing libertarians are fine with government coercion when they view the goal as important enough. Most normal, intelligent people think that the the government may take coercive actions restricting economic freedom if the benefits in the form of other freedoms (because normal, intelligent people recognize other types of freedom exist and have import) are sufficiently great. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-maces-and-others-opinion-about-societal-fairness-99-etc/605215.md?page=7)