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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Should I Quit College?

    If you have debts, you should repay them.

That's a funny kind of moral absolutism. I think it depends on whether or not the mechanism for creating the debt was entirely just in the first place. I'm not sure the inflated price of college combined with federally guaranteed student loans from a faceless corporate creditor that experiences no risk really fits the bill.

In the case of a loan through a family friend, I would feel more obliged to honor it.





mk  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I strongly agree with this sentiment. IMHO one of the biggest cons of recent years was convincing the public that honoring debts to debtors that did not honor their own was the moral thing to do.

Of course, a personal debt to family or a friend has moral obligations, but you would be hard-pressed to find a large debt underwriting institution that views its contracts in moral terms. When the contract is viewed only through a legal perspective on the other side of the table, you do yourself a great disservice to assume the whole of the moral baggage.

thenewgreen  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not to mention that by the time you decide to pay the debt, if it is already delinquent, the person or entity that financed you to begin with is often no longer holding the debt, but has sold it to someone else for pennies on the dollar. It's a strange, strange process and not one that should be confused with the emotional strings that occur when borrowing money from a friend or family member. Two very different things.

BLOB_CASTLE  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I could sit here and read this subset of the thread for days.

user-inactivated  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  
BLOB_CASTLE  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My local library has this. I am checking it out as soon as possible.

symmetry  ·  3989 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, that's fair. In this case I'm inclined to agree with you. But in most cases, regardless of whether or not you think the debt is just, you still agreed to pay it back in the first place. Since you made that initial commitment, I still think you have a moral obligation to repay.