Let's talk about debt forgiveness, and why it's hard.

Since this is a popular topic these days.
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But first let's talk about when it wasn't hard.

Back in the day, when the Lords and Ladies owned everything, they would lend money as a way of extracting rent from everyone.

Periodically, this got a little too top heavy and everyone got angry.
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And so the Ladies and Lords, having calculated that they enjoyed having their heads attached to their bodies, would do a Debt Jubilee.

After all - they still owned everything, so it was just a temporary loss of income.

And they kept their heads.
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But that's not quite how debt works anymore. You see - debt isn't just simplistic rent seeking anymore (note: it still kind of is this, it's just not *just* this).

Today, debt is an asset. And we are the rent seekers.

What does that mean "we are the rent seekers?"
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Well in our representative government, we are the Lords and Ladies. Rent seeking isn't kingdoms and peasants anymore.

It's pensions. It's 401(k)s. It's your Target Date 2047 fund.

We are the rent seekers, renting ourselves to ourselves.
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And debt is an asset now - an asset held by those pensions and institutions and target date funds.

So if we "forgive" it, like... what does that mean? Who gets hit?

While it's fanciful to think it might be Wall St. that's more or less wrong.
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No - Wall St. are no Ladies and Lords, they are simple merchants. They take our debt from us, package it up (for a fee!), and then sell it back to us.

They are temporal arbitrageurs, not likely to get hit overly hard by a Jubilee.

Sadly, there is no great villain here.
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Or rather: "we have met the enemy, and it is us."

Awkwardly... if We The People want to do a debt jubilee, then We The People are also going to get hit by an asset write down, because We The People are holding that debt as assets.
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Now of course there's some detail here around who owns what forms of debt and who would take the hit and all that, but ask yourself: who do you think will see this coming and duck -- the Big People or the Little People?
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So while I agree that it's not great and perhaps 'unfair' that things like student debt are such a burden, the mechanics of how we fix that are... complex.

Beware those offering simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Take note of what they're selling.
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