The idea of student loan repayment is as annoying to me as any other "reparations".
Something that would potentially fix the issue for future students is to allow bankruptcy to cancel student loans (NOT RETROACTIVE). Banks would quit granting loans to people with majors in soft studies meaning a low probability of repayment.
Once the pool of candidates dries up most of those silly departments fade away. (Lgbt/Women's studies, basket weaving etc...)
I will say that Logic and Critical thinking (philosophy dept) was a great class and useful knowledge when applied, eg.. determine the validity of an argument, avoiding fallacies while arguing etc...

:lifter Thank you

Finest kind post. ;)

Source JSTOR

Veil Of Ignorance
The "veil of ignorance", along with the original position, is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue (e.g., slavery) based upon the following thought experiment: parties to the original position know nothing about the particular abilities, tastes, and positions individuals will have within a social order. When such parties are selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society in which they will live, the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing who will receive a given distribution of rights, positions, and resources in that society. For example, for a proposed society in which 50% of the population is kept in slavery, it follows that on entering the new society there is a 50% likelihood that the participant would be a slave. The idea is that parties subject to the veil of ignorance will make choices based upon moral considerations, since they will not be able to make choices based on self- or class-interest. As John Rawls put it, "no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like." The idea of the thought experiment is to render obsolete those personal considerations that are morally irrelevant to the justice or injustice of principles meant to allocate the benefits of social cooperation. The veil of ignorance is part of a long tradition of thinking in terms of a social contract. The writings of Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson offer examples of this tradition

Distributive Justice
Distributive justice concerns the nature of a socially just allocation of goods in a society. A society in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive justice. The concept includes the available quantities of goods, the process by which goods are to be distributed, and the resulting allocation of the goods to the members of the society. Often contrasted with just process, which is concerned with the administration of law, distributive justice concentrates on outcomes. This subject has been given considerable attention in philosophy and the social sciences. In social psychology, distributive justice is defined as perceived fairness of how rewards and costs are shared by (distributed across) group members. For example, when workers of the same job are paid different salaries, group members may feel that distributive justice has not occurred. To determine whether distributive justice has taken place, individuals often turn to the distributive norms of their group. A norm is the standard of behaviour that is required, desired, or designated as normal within a particular group. If rewards and costs are allocated according to the designated distributive norms of the group, distributive justice has occurred.

Utilitarianism
(This article discusses utilitarian ethical theory. For a discussion of John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism, see Utilitarianism (book). For the architectural theory, see Utilitarianism (architecture)) Utilitarianism is a theory about what we ought to do. It states that the best action is the one that maximizes utility. "Utility" is defined in various ways, usually in terms of the well-being of sentient entities, such as human beings and other animals. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, gave this definition of "utility": it is the sum of all pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action. The philosopher John Stuart Mill developed this concept further. He included not only the quantity of the pleasure, but also the quality of pleasure. He focused on rules, instead of individual actions. Others have proposed a theory called "negative utilitarianism." They define utility only in terms of suffering. Utilitarianism is a version of what Elizabeth Anscombe called "consequentialism". Consequentialism states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Contrast this view with virtue ethics, which enshrines virtue as a moral good. Some believe that one's intentions are also ethically important. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism, utilitarianism considers all interests equally. Proponents of utilitarianism have disagreed on a number of points. Should individual acts should conform to utility (act utilitarianism)? Or, should agents conform to ethical rules (rule utilitarianism)? Should utility should be calculated as an aggregate (total utilitarianism) or as an average (average utilitarianism)? Though the seeds of the theory can be found in the hedonists Aristippus and Epicurus, who viewed happiness as the only good, the tradition of utilitarianism properly begins with Bentham, and has included John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, R. M. Hare and Peter Singer. It has been applied the suffering of non-human animals, and the ethics of raising animals for food. Opponents of utilitarianism have raised a number of objections. Some say that utilitarianism ignores justice. Others call it impractical. Specific criticisms have included the mere addition paradox and the utility monster.

Curious; how recent is your exposure to that approach? Freshmen grand-daughter & I were discussing something in Aristotle's Rhetoric, and it comes merely 2 paragraphs in...

He clearly recognized this as an approach/tactic, when facts are inconvenient, more than a few days ago. This certainly seems to me an approach that much of political debate now embraces, but it seems (to the advantage of the presenter, usually the leftist) that many (on the right) have lost the discernment, or will, to insist on fact to back up the emotion-based argument.

It's like the 2nd side of that coin isn't getting emphasized unless one is as sharp as my grand-daughter already. Arguments are nowadays couched in "what are you going to believe, the facts, or my over-the-top emotional sincerity?" Then, too, especially for young people, there is the challenge in a huge university system to veer toward emotion-based group-think, going along to get along. All that does is fertilize eggs to continue growing the problem.

The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.

I see this violated many time every day even on this site.

For instance, I do not beleive that having served in the military automatically makes someones opinion on anything other than military matters more or less valid. ie. Expertise in one field does not necessarily transfer to another.

There are many other logical fallacies that people slip in to their arguments especially when they are speaking to people who already agree with them. Once emotions get stirred up, reason loses out to fear or pride.

Of course name calling can be effective. Get someone upset and they will not think as clearly and sometime violence IS the answer. But once an opponent throws out the red herring, straw man, appeal to emotion, argument ad hominem or begging the question, I usually lose interest in their arguments.

Nice passive aggressive position, so what calls you to action Mr. cool Breeze?

I agree 100% and have been advocating to young people to avoid excess student debt and focus on high ROI degree programs.

Unfortunately, there are far too many high paying fake white collar jobs that will be destroyed in doing so.

My guess is that the online education platforms will begin to eliminate the poor, then mediocre, then “good” colleges and universities from the bottom up pedigree wise.

Only the mega brand name schools are assured of survival in some shape or form, but even they have to adapt or die.

Certainly not anyone who leads off with a red herring, straw man and an ad hominem attack.

Touche", Sir.

Couple quick questions, as I'm not grasping something here:

1. 1st sentence: Annoying in what way? There should be repayment, or the notion of repayment is distasteful?

2. In the bankruptcy consideration, how does bankruptcy work now? (Truly don't know, never done it, never carried student-loan debt.)
Do you think the financial community has the stones to say "you're majoring in Trans-National Gender Studies? Poor risk-Disapproved" vs. "you're majoring in Industrial Engineering? Good risk-Approved" ?
(As an aside, we already know that financial institutions are allowed to favor/hate groups & views that align with the CEO's wishes. That's how the lenders, payment processing firms and Visa & Mastercard are allowed to wreak their hate on firearms-related businesses, especially small individually-owned ones.)

What is old is now new again! (flashback)

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's s time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

(Buffalo Springfield/Stephen Stills - December 5, 1966)

I meant that I can see SJW's attempting to tie the idea of student loan repayment to "reparations" to other groups, primarily anyone desended from former slaves. People under massive student loan are trying to portray themselves as "victims of a banking system that our government has allowed to take advantage of them"


I find the whole idea of our government giving away money for real or imagined injustices to be wrong on any level. SJW types (and those who rely upon their support) generally use emotional based arguments (guilt, fear, fairness) to argue for reperations/repayment.

Currently, when a person declares bankruptcy to get out from under debt, student loans are not forgiven. Hard for a bank to repossess what someone has learned even if they never use the knowledge.
So if the rules are changed, why would a bank loan a 20 year old $80k when that person is pursuing a degree in a profession that pays very little? Or to a pre med student with a 2.0 GPA for that matter.
I would not change the rules retroactively to benefit people who made poor decisions in the past.

Penn,
Thank you. I assumed your well crafted comment was designed to help make a point.

Rog, thanks.

BINGO! :lifter

Persuasion (especially persuasion on a large scale) and debate are not the same thing.
Scott Adams has been addressing this for a few years.

One of the problems people run into with debate is the lack of specifically defined assumptions.
Often, parties who can't agree on "facts and logic" are both reasonably logical, given their own mutually-exclusive set of unstated assumptions.

For instance, SJWs assume that: (1) all hierarchies are arbitrary, purely based on power, and (2) no merit is involved.
Many of their arguments and prescriptions for remedy are quite logical, given the original axioms.

The problem is that if you directly attack either of their assumptions, they immediately go to the logical fallacy of false dichotomy.
They re-cast your position as (1) hierarchies involve no arbitrary power and (2) hierarchies are purely based on merit.

Both of those positions are demonstrably false and SJWs conclude they have proven their assumptions.
They will be resistant to any attempts at nuance and attempts to debate or influence them by directly attacking their assumptions will prove fruitless.

Instead, you must grant them their assumptions, then build logical connections to conclusions which can be shown to be true or false in reality.
When conclusions logically connected to their assumptions are shown to be false in reality, you just sit back and let them chew on it, without doing an end-zone dance.

From a persuasion perspective, many will listen because you've reached "emotional congruence" by granting their assumptions, and they are also allowed the ability to retreat with dignity when shown error.
Logically speaking, this is proof by contradiction (or, in this case, disproof by contradiction) using contraposition.

This addresses both the persuasion and debate angles.
It doesn't work on all, but it will reach some.