2026-11-01 13:34 UTC
I appreciate the sentiment, but this is absolutely not how it works.
Obligation to pay back debts is essential to have a functional financial system, which in turn is needed in order to people be able to consume today (buy houses, start businesses) at the expense of tomorrow. If you start cancelling debt, or forcing government to pay it back, you create wrong incentives and either stifle the money supply or cause debt bubbles.
Where the criticism should go is, why do people need to take on debt in the first place? Education should not require it, the state should invest in its people and pay for it. Housing should be cheap enough that rent should be affordable on a minimum-wage paycheck. Or supported by the government if unemployed.
Debt should only be needed for investing in the future, not covering essential spending. But it should be still possible and it should be expected that it’s paid back.
Replies (1)
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@NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 2026-11-01 23:16
That's not really the point of the book (and therefore the meme). You should at least read the introduction, but basically the book explains the massive role debt has had in human history, but one theme that shows up again and again is essentially payday loans, rich people using debt as a way to justify their violent control of labor or resources while making I seem like the poor's fault. I also want to note (the book points this out in the introduction), but in modern developed countries you don't in fact always have to pay your debts. Bankruptcy is a thing, and nobody gets told to, say, sell themselves or their family into slavery to pay their mortgage.