
Itâs late August, which means the fall semester is starting, which means student loans are getting disbursed. The average American college student owes $29,400 upon graduation, and percentages are increasing every year. People grasping at the chance of a future have accumulated over a trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt. A TRILLION. Thatâs more than Americaâs total credit-card debt. If that seems like an impossibly large number, thatâs because it is. Itâs not real. Student loan debt is pretend; itâs Monopoly money, itâs fairy dust. So letâs stop acting like itâs a problem, because it totally doesnât have to be.
Just donât pay your student loans. Let âem default. Fuck it! Not paying your student loans would be an act of civil disobedience if the money actually mattered, which it doesnât.
If youâve already graduated from college, youâve already received the service for which you agreed to pay. If you have your degree, you have it. They canât take it away from you. If the money actually mattered, you would have had to pay upfront. Colleges arenât the Pied Piper; they wonât steal your children if you donât pay them (not that you can afford to have children, anyway).
Think about bitcoins. When bitcoins were a thing, most people didnât get it and thought it was a fad, but technocrats such as Marc Andreesen and the Winklevoss twins were like, âNo, this is definitely real. Bitcoin is money, and yâall should definitely buy in.â And then Mt. Gox, the bitcoin bank, got robbed, and like a hundred million dollars worth of bitcoins got stolen, and the Winklevii and everyone were like, âHaha, just kidding! Bitcoinâs not really money! Just a fad!â
Student loans are bitcoins. If we donât believe in them, they donât exist.
You may be thinking, âbut if I agree to borrow money knowing in advance that I will never pay it, isnât that stealing?â Sure it is. But who are you stealing from? The bank? The federal government? Fuck the bank! Fuck the federal government! Lenders are criminals. Theyâre lending you money knowing full well that theyâre going to own you forever. Theyâll lend you money, sure, but at a loan-shark interest rate.
But thereâs an important difference between institutional lenders and loan sharks: Institutional lenders wonât take your debt out of your flesh. Whatâs the bank gonna do if you donât pay them? Break your kneecaps? No, theyâll make it impossible for you to get another loan.
People say this like itâs a bad thing. âOh, Iâll never be able to buy a house.â Well, you were never gonna be able to buy a house anyway! The American Dream is dead, dude! Draw me up a financial plan thatâll show me how youâll save up enough for a down payment. Youâre a perpetual intern/dishwasher. Youâll be lucky if you can afford to rent a room at the Dayâs Inn. You shouldnât have a credit card. Thatâs just more debt. Your credit is bad? So what! If you donât pay your loans, youâll have street credit.
This will only work if everyone defaults together. If nobody pays, what are they gonna do? Make everybody pay? No, theyâll go after a few people to try and scare everyone else. Donât let them scare you. Itâs like downloading mp3s. A few people got sued, but everybody kept doing it, and eventually the music industry gave up and music is free now. We can force colleges to invent their own version of Spotify. If no one pays, the debt industry collapses.
So the next time you get a bill, throw it away. Take what they offer, but donât buy in. Live your life without fear and subservience.
(All right, obviously, I donât know what Iâm talking about and you should try to pay off your loans. But seriously, fuck student loans.)