Thread by @Doc_0

Higher education was ruined the same way health care was. Politicians focus on the medium of exchange (student loans, medical insurance) instead of the underlying resource (education, medicine.) The resource gets worse as the currency which pays for it is endlessly manipulated.

Naturally, focusing on currency manipulation makes it harder for the public to see what's going on with the actual resource. Providers and consumers grow further apart, with a thick layer of bureaucracy and third-party financing between them.

This is by design, since the point of obfuscating costs with government subsidies, government-regulated loans, and third-party payers is to insulate the end product from market forces. The people are persuaded those sacred goods should not be treated as mere commodities.

Unfortunately, insulating something from market pressure, market *discipline*, makes its cost and quality go haywire. The Big Lie is that wise and benevolent government regulators can impose the necessary discipline, keeping cost under control and quality high.

This is one of the grand illusions of socialism. History has utterly debunked it, but socialists still believe it with religious fervor and messianic zeal. Government control is ALWAYS far more expensive and less efficient than market discipline, usually by an order of magnitude.

There is no substitute for consumers rationally evaluating the cost and value of goods. There is no discipline remotely equivalent to the ice-cold threat of millions of customers who can take their business elsewhere.

Consumers need reliable information to make those assessments of cost and value. They need to know what their money is worth, the true value of the goods they seek to purchase, and the value of realistic alternatives. Only informed choices are truly free choices.

Just and efficient government has an important role to play in providing pure information to consumers and protecting them from fraud. Far too often, our government does the exact opposite - obfuscating costs, tinkering with the value of currency, concealing alternatives.

Those are all factors in play with education: Ridiculous amounts of bloat and waste, skyrocketing tuition prices, treating college degrees as the mandatory ticket to anything better than subsistence labor... all inevitable results of separating providers from consumers.

And as you can clearly see from Democrats using student loan debt relief as a chain around the necks of young voters, this was done DELIBERATELY. The goal was to inflate student debt until the Party of Government could use it as an instrument of political control.

If informed choice is the essence of freedom, then uninformed obedience is the essence of socialism. The ideal socialist environment is one in which consumers are separated from producers by impenetrable mountains of bureaucracy. No one knows what anything is truly worth.

The popular socialist canard of "X is a basic human right so it should be FREE!" is the ultimate expression of this doctrine. There is no more blunt and effective way to conceal the value of something than convincing people its cost should be "zero."

So take a good, long look at the horrific disaster Democrats made out of student loans, my fellow Americans of all ages... and imagine how much education will cost, how poor its quality will be, and how much control they will gain over your life if they make it "free."

Here's the thing about "free" lunches: not only are they a lie, because nothing is free no matter how hard government works to conceal its cost, but they also represent the loss of your control and freedom. That tantalizing ZERO is a black hole that devours vital information.

You can't walk away from "zero" cost. You can't refuse to pay for it. You cannot seek alternatives armed with pure knowledge of cost and value. You cannot properly assess if you're getting fair value for the "zero" you are paying.

And before you know it, that black hole of "zero" cost is devouring your other freedoms. Democrats are telling students they cannot consider voting for anyone else if they want debt relief. Are your convictions in other matters worth $50k to you? If not, you will OBEY. /end