> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to.

yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"

This is a weird take to read when you're someone who dropped out of college when the debt load got too scary and had learned enough to gain a marketable skill and enter industry. Paid my debt off in a couple years. This was less than a decade ago, too, I'm not that old.

Tuition has been frozen at my university since I left so the kids there now have the same exact choices I had

The big difference between me and my peers was that I did poorly academically my first year and it forced me to enter the work force and learn the value of the money I was borrowing, and after that I borrowed the minimum I could to remain in school, for the minimum time, as it was so expensive.

I'm supposed to believe that it's impossible to avoid... When I avoided it?

I even got screwed by federal assistance because my parents seemed financially healthier than they were. I paid for 90% of my own educational costs, by working part time. And like I said this was the late 00s, early 10s, I'm not telling a tale from the 70s

My wife has a similar story, but started out much poorer. Now we're both professionals sans degrees making over six figures, no debt. But that's impossible.

I get it, these are anecdotes. But student loan debt is a choice, and it's one we both avoided, so it's definitely possible to do.

> I'm supposed to believe that it's impossible to avoid... When I avoided it?

Being possible isn't the same as being scalable, for the vast majority of people debt is extremely difficult to get out of, and it's in the interest of the creditors (quite literally) to encourage lending to people who are likely to find it difficult to break free of the compounding interest, because it maximises their return.

Even assuming everyone was individually instantly capable of recognise and managing the risks of their debt, there would be massive reduced opportunity for ways to escape it, and the interest might be higher in order to satisfy the creditors who would otherwise not get as much return... it would be much harder to escape in that situation - From that perspective you should count yourself lucky, had everyone been as "smart" you might still be in debt.

Congrats, you're the exception that proves the rule.

I know a lot of people who were, frankly, railroaded into college. Middle class kids who never had to worry about money, did good to excellent in school, never worked a serious job, were told by their schools, parents, teachers, television and the internet that any degree was a path to success. Then the clock strikes midnight on their 18th birthday and they have no idea how to make informed decisions, so they just do what they've been told by everyone they've trusted for their entire lives.

They mostly ended up with history, sociology or some other useless undergraduate degrees and working at Starbucks if they're lucky and five to six figures of student loan debt with no way to pay it off. And by the time they're wise enough to actually handle money responsibly they're already trapped.

Also most universities are not freezing tuition, and I'm wondering where you went to college and what your part time job was, and how much assistance you got. You're not paying college tuition by working the counter at California Pizza Kitchen part-time. Plus Tuition has continued to inflate every year even since the early tens, although the rate of inflation has decreased in recent years. https://www.in2013dollars.com/College-tuition-and-fees/price...

Nonsense. Student loans are not some kind of enforced slavery or whatever. You are getting a education, you are investing in human capital and that will increase your earnings potential for the rest of your life. Just like every other investment.

You are like gone be working for 40 years, to spend some of that paying back university is not a horrible deal. People here act like you get absolutely nothing for student loans as if you were born a debt slave.

One can make an argument of course that another system is better, a system where everybody (including people who don't go to university) pay more taxes and you pay more taxes in order to pay for higher education. That argument can be made.

There are many improvements that could be made, less people should do formal education and more people should be doing apprenticeships and then part time further education. That would produce much less debt without actually fundamentally changing the system.

However to act like this is some draconian feudalism is crazy.

no, it's simply the reality that there's quite a bit of range from the the constant late-stage-capitalism crowd's doomsday worldview to the libertarian/alt-right/whatever crowd's "snowflakes just want to have 30 genders and don't want to work" narrative.

yes, things could be better. (yes, a lot better if people suddenly were suprarational.) yes, there are metrics that regressed in the US, or even in the world in general (civil liberties for example)

but it's quite possible to look at each issue in context, and this approach is a lot healthier and more useful than adopting either extreme. (student debt is basically the perfect issue for this, because without context we can just throw anecdotes or useless overly general statements at each other. there's not even consensus about what's the problem. yes, tuition costs are high, and rising. yes, many people have trouble servicing their debt. and so on. but these are different - though of course interconnected - problems. nor is there consensus about who is most affected. should society instead focus on those who did not even have the opportunity to apply to collage? should we focus on those who dropped out due to financial hardship yet ended up with debt? both? neither? and so on.)

If it works for BMW, why wouldn't it work for Ford, Toyota and GM? The financial incentive will cause these user-hostile subscriptions to spread, and probably to more than just heated seats, if/when the model is proven.

The analogy to feudalism might be stretched in the literal sense, but most people use the term as a substitute for "you own nothing and are subject to the whims of the owner".

And there's a lot of truth to that for the average person, compared to conditions even 20 years ago. With regard to heated seats, my 22 year old car has heated seats. They have never required a subscription, and they are mine for as long as they function/are repairable. Now you can argue that, theoretically, car companies could charge less for the car up front and make it up on the subscriptions, so the consumer will see increased customization and savings, and the car company will make the same amount of money instead of more money! If you believe that I have a subscription to a bridge to sell you for $19.99 a month.

Life has been good in the west for a long, long time. But looking at how my great-grandfather lived (through the depression), and his point of view is massively different.

Economically things look rather grim. Goods will get more and more expensive. People will have less money to spend on frivolous items. Before they'd ignore minor expenses, now they will look for the best possible deals.

Subscriptions only work when people don't pay attention. BMW will be OK because it's just a rich person's toy anyway. I don't see it working for mass-market cars.

> this is the extreme, extreme minority of features from an extreme minority of cars, by the extreme of car manufactures.

the problem is you don't see the big picture: all modern tractors are internet connected and farmers are not allowed to repair them.

all TVs are smart, you cant't buy a new 'dumb' TV. Philips recently added adslvertisements to TVs people bought years ago.

This isn't some niche thing that won't affect you, this is a paradigme shift like we haven't seen in a century.

if you rent an apartment in 2050, it will come with a smart oven, frisge and toilet. The oven will be brans-locked to wallmart and if you buy food somewhere else it will refuse to turn on with the warning "unauthorised substance detected"

Sounds like someone is trying to morally justify their success off the back of those sweet, sweet subscription revenues.

Heated seats is a luxury, sure. But what about music? Kitchen appliances? Movies and TV? Productivity software? Transportation?

All these things are things we own much less of (or "own," as it were, since we got to keep physical custody of the bits, and they didn't try to authenticate against a web service)

The situation is positively feudal, people are sharecropping increasingly large parts of their lives. And the lords sit in their castles, surrounded by yes-men, pushing the limits of legality and ignoring the cries of the people that make their businesses happen.

> Sounds like someone is trying to morally justify their success off the back of those sweet, sweet subscription revenues.

I implied nothing about myself. I myself did not go to university.

> Heated seats is a luxury, sure. But what about music? Kitchen appliances? Movies and TV? Productivity software? Transportation?

Subscription is just one way to pay for things, sometimes it makes sense sometimes it doesn't. Public transport have been using subscription for decades and people somehow don't think that's a bad thing.

For cars people usually use loans, and that ends up being just another form of monthly payment.

They have advantages and disadvantages depending on many factors. To have moral outrage because something in particular uses subscription makes no sense.

The waste majority of the things you named the waste majority of the time don't need subscription. And the reality is that while you don't need a subscription for music for example, people do actually prefer it in some cases and that is fine.

> people are sharecropping increasingly large parts of their lives

Comparing digital goods to land ownership is a terrible analogy.

> And the lords sit in their castles, surrounded by yes-men

You have a real flair for storytelling, next you will add some more fantasy element and you will tell me they have 'greedy grins' or whatever. Makes for good drama I guess.

> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to.

Probably varies a lot by location. IIRC, the UK government's own report on their current university fee/loan structure anticipates a large number of people paying off their loans so slowly that they will end up being written off.

I think this counts as both a stealth tax and stealth government borrowing.

Feudalism was more like slavery. Serfs could not marry, move or own land without permission. Serfs could be sold (not individuals but entire villages). Comparing it to BMW ownership is disgusting!