The Man Who Sold Shares of Himself 215
RougeFemme writes "This is a fascinating story about a man who sold shares in himself, primarily to fund his start-up ideas. He ran into the same issues that companies run into when taking on corporate funding — except that in his case, the decisions made by his shareholders bled over into his personal life. This incuded his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, who became a shareholder activist over the issue of whether or not he should have a vasectomy. The experiment continues."
The perils of selling yourself to your friends.
Egads! (Score:5, Funny)
This incuded his relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, who became a shareholder activist over the issue of whether or not he should have a vasectomy.
Talk about a Directors Cut!
Re:Egads! (Score:5, Funny)
This man (Score:3, Informative)
This man defines the word 'sellout'.
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And they only cost $11.
I would love to buy a huge chunk, if he let me vote on more interesting things, or better yet let me propose what we are voting on.
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He sold so few initially because he kept a huge chunk of treasury stock and limited not only the buyer pool but also the purchase window. So, your description is based on (very) faulty assumptions.
The Unincorporated Man (Score:3, Insightful)
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Considering all the trouble Scientology had with the IRS in getting non-profit status, I am surprised that worked for an individual. Granted Scientology did get to become non-profit eventually, but they at least have a set of beliefs and a number of adherents. As well as a lot of money and lawyers to get the IRS to see their way.
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I've no idea what happened to the dude. And I stopped being friends with the sort-of-weird friend 20 years ago, so now we'll never find out.
A least we have a price (Score:2)
So, this is how much his life is worth, 100.000$.
Find out who your real friends are (Score:2)
This is a great way to find out who your real friends are:
the folks who respect you enough as a free human being not to *buy control of your life* for their profit.
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Sorry, but he set himself up so he doesn't actually have voting shares, and entirely put his life in the hands of his, er, 'investors'.
Sounds like a case of 'epic stupid' to me.
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But, shouldn't you be able to trust your friends to make decisions for you?
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In an abstract, ideal world, maybe. Or at least consider their advice.
But if you really think turning over your life decisions to a committee of your friends is going to be a good idea, you deserve something like this.
Chainsaw Al (Score:3)
Would be worth it if you could vote on more stuff. (Score:2)
I would buy many shares if I could vote on more important stuff. Since they are only $11 and it appears ~100 shares is enough to control a decision I would be a buyer when he offers up more control.
I also hope he enjoys eating broken glass and putting tattoos on his face.
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But it is never pleasant.
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Why wait? There are plenty of companies you can buy voting shares in and then cause permanent damage to.
Gimmick, nothing more. (Score:2)
It's just a gimmick. It's entertaining, and so catches the news (I think it was on Today...today). It's also basically a dumb idea. The guy is a poster child for the idea that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. He might be able to roll this into a movie and make a little money (Catfish, anyone?) but other than that, there's nothing to see here. Move along.
Keep Portland Weird (Score:2)
From the website, it says one of the votes was whether or not this guys should become a vegetarian. 453 votes for yes, 288 for no. Ah Portland, you never disappoint.
I read that book too (Score:2)
It was good and thought provoking.
http://www.theunincorporatedman.com/ [theunincorporatedman.com]
"A brilliant industrialist named Justin Cord awakes from a 300-year cryonic suspension into a world that has accepted an extreme form of market capitalism. It's a world in which humans themselves have become incorporated and most people no longer own a majority of themselves."
The nature of financial products (Score:5, Interesting)
Financial products are logical constructs. Virtual products. Like objects in an online game which people buy and sell.
The financial world depends on logical constructs. Currency, the base of the financial world, is a logical construct. Slips of paper to which people ascribe value. Gold is the same way. One cannot eat gold, wear it, drink it, shelter under it, use it to bind wounds or cure ailments. But to many (most) it has "value." Currency is a durable construct because it makes people's lives easier, and improves their standard of living.
Stocks ("shares of ownership") are an older financial product. So are bonds. Futures are bets. Then you get into the myriad financial products/bets and their derivatives on which today's global financial system is based.
1) "A financial product is about as conceptual as you can get,” says Wilson Ervin, a senior adviser at Credit Suisse. “You just need paper and ink.”-- The Economist magazine [economist.com]
2) "In an even more blunt description, Tourre calls the CDOs he produced "intellectual masturbation" and likens himself to Dr. Frankenstein. "When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'well, what if we created a 'thing', which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?")" -- CNN / Money [cnn.com]
"Financial Innovation" consists of two things:
1) Creation of new virtual products / logical constructs.
2) Methods by which one can entice others to take on more debt.
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said the only beneficial financial innovation of the last 30 years was the ATM. [telegraph.co.uk] However, the ATM is not a financial innovation, but a technological one. So that leaves a dim legacy of recent financial innovation.
I'm all for financial innovation just as long as it doesn't lead to "financial pollution" - public costs. Like a tannery which dumps effluent into a river. The tannery keeps the profit and the public bears the costs. The concept is known in the financial sector as "privatize the profits, socialize the losses." In recent years, the financial sector has been able to successfully privatize its profits, yet push the costs onto the public. This is done by government insurance of private debt, and outright rescues and bailouts.
In any regulation of the financial sector, the key I think is to make sure that losses are limited to the participants in the transaction.
This fellow - well if he is able to make money, bravo. If he and his shareholders lose money, the laws regulating the financial sector should make sure that the losses are limited to participants in the transaction, and not imposed on the public.
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Great post, to me financial innovation is defined as "when one or more parties take advantage of legal edge-cases (loopholes) to their benefit". This happens a lot in the insurance industry.
Now to nit-pick, but with a comedic approach...
You said: "One cannot eat gold, wear it, drink it, shelter under it, use it to bind wounds or cure ailments."
* Eat Gold - Gold flaked ice cream: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-05/world/35270313_1_ice-cream-iranians-oil-windfall [washingtonpost.com]
* Wear Gold - Seriously, this is
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An interesting tirade on financial products. Sadly, many human endeavors suffer from similar limitations/pitfalls: computer programming, law and torts, diplomacy/war.
Each of these virtual constructs are created from the human mind, have ephemerial existance (outside of some recorded media like paper and ink), and have the potential for serious impact on the public at large when things go wrong at a large scale.
At the end of the day, human social institutions are all that hold up these virtual constructs of
The Unincorporated Man (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone gave me a copy a couple of years ago (a galley proof I think) about a future where shares are issued at birth for everyone, and what happens when someone shows up who is not incorporated.
A good read, though I didn't like the ending. It was as if someone said "Quick, we need to publish the book, end it".
Just silly performance art (Score:3)
This was kind of funny, but from reading the article it looks like he took it way too seriously. (And it seemed he frequently used "shareholder value" or "shareholder votes" as a good excuse for doing what he wanted to do instead of doing what his girlfriend wanted him to do.)
Interesting social experiment (Score:2)
And, potentially could put a lot of money in his pocket. I'd be more interested in how the shareholders use their powers.
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Hot stock tip! (Score:2)
Prepare your Anus! (Score:2)
Bowie bonds? (Score:2)
The first thing that came to mind when I read the title was when David Bowie sold bonds, based on future royalties. He took that one time payment to buy some of his discography back. Not bad for him.
But... James Brown tried the same thing, and it ended not as well. There were lawsuits about what the value should have been. This is now literally a textbook case [google.com] of how hard an oddball bond valuation is. It went all the way to the NY Supreme Court [thediscography.org] (posthumously, for Brown).
Back to this case... valuation will b
This was one of the most absurd (Score:2)
This was one of the most absurd glibertarian experiments in "free-market" bullshit I've ever read. I did not finish the story. Stopped when we had shareholders considering whether Merril's life insurance policy belonged to them or not.
I hope Mr. Merrill likes his philosophies. They are fucking ruining his life.
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Merrill debuted the Romance Advisory Committee site in June 2012. Each interested shareholder received a password and could monitor Merrill’s romantic activity while anonymously voting candidates up or down. There was also a “candidate referral form” in case anybody wanted to suggest a match. ... [The shareholders] gave a 97 percent approval rating to a guy referred to as Jordon California. Feeling the weight of investor expectations, Merrill spent a drunken night “fooling around” with him. [emphasis mine]
If that's Merrill's orientation, no foul. But if it isn't, and he did it anyway...? Yikes.
There's a fine line between clever and stupid (Score:2)
...and this just proves it.
What seems, theoretically, to be a clever 'experiment' in market capitalism ends up, essentially, to be an exercise in voluntary slavery.
"Soon after the split, Merrill received a $100,000 life insurance policy as a new benefit at his customer-service job. Shareholders quickly decided that in the event of Merrillâ(TM)s death, the policy should be distributed among them. It opened up the possibility that, in financial terms, Merrill might be a more valuable asset if he were liq
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That's hilarious, because if, in fact, he was honestly following through with this experiment (and had, apparently, neglected to leave himself an out-clause), they should have had him jump off a bridge.
Committing suicide is usually illegal in US states (not that they can put you in jail after you are dead). US contract law cannot bind you to illegal acts, thus the shareholders cannot force him to do it regardless of how honestly he was following the experiment.
The only problem I see... (Score:2)
1st thot = harriman from RAHs tMWStM (Score:2)
howdy y'all,
the 1st thot i had on reading the title was the RAH story "the man who sold the moon". this ...
The Man Who Sold the Moon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon [wikipedia.org]
"
Harriman intends to be on the ship, but the majority owners of the venture object to his presence on the flight; he is too valuable to the company to risk in space. The rocket leaves without Harriman, who "looks as Moses must have looked, when he gazed out over the promised land."
"
alway
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Re:Slavery? (Score:4, Insightful)
Key differences from a bank loan:
(a) you may never be able to pay it back, since the more wealth and willingness you have to buy back outstanding shares and "go private," the more those shares are likely to cost, and
(b) the bank doesn't make detailed decisions about how you live your life; only that you must pay back $XX every month (regardless of how you get it)
Re:Slavery? (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course, back then slaves weren't really as exploited as they were in more modern times and one could even buy themselves out of slavery if the made enough money
Slavery from those two time periods certainly had differences, but I don't think it rises to the levels where you can consider them different institutions. In the US when slavery was legal, there were many cases of men buying their freedom from their owners.
One of the reasons we may not hear about as much abuse/exploitation from ancient times was because if your society did not consider an action (such as sleeping with your slaves) to be an abuse, it simply wasn't debated as it wasn't interesting, no more
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Well it would not be abuse... Prostitution was legal, and if you are a slave you cannot object to the type of labour your owner asks of you (within legal bounds at least).
Theoretically you could come up with a slavery contract that restricted what the owner could ask you to do and when and how much, but at what point would that still be called slavery?
If you are a slave, but only plant and harvest cotton, and only from 9 to 5, 5 days a week. then you are just a contracted worker who is paid upfront.
Re:Slavery? (Score:5, Interesting)
Conversely, at what point could employment conditions in the industrial world, where the threat of being fired is like the threat of losing access to healthcare or even losing your home, be called a slow, steady return to the servile state? In the Roman republic, the working poor largely chose to work as what we would call day laborers. Workers would hang out near the forum (they didn't have a Home Depot, or I suppose a Domus Depositum back then, the savages) and wait for someone to come hire them for the day. One of the most common jobs was simply carrying goods, mostly building material, from the outer to the inner parts of town since ox carts were forbidden in town. You'd get a flat wage for the work once the day was done and you'd likely work for someone else entirely the next day. I forget the exact calculations, but once the public grain dole was in place an unskilled laborer could make a living for himself and his family by securing such work for about 100 days out of the year. You wouldn't get rich but you'd have food in your stomach and enough money to rent an apartment in one of the massive apartment blocks (insulae). This was considered a preferable form of unskilled labor for many because there was a stigma attached to regular employment, i.e. going to work for the same person day after day, and taking his orders, looked too much like slavery.
Re:Slavery? (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, that is one of major downfalls of living in civilization that has outlawed slavery. It becomes far harder, if not impossible, to tell if you are a slave or not.
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It's easy. If you can terminate your contract at any time, and all you lose are the benefits, then you are not a slave.
With work being plentiful and easy to obtain, this is no problem. Today it is a hassle for companies to hire labour, and nearly every person in the Western world is in at least 2x their annual salary in debt. Combine that with a generation-low employment rates, and it practically encourages employers to abuse their employees to squeeze every last drop from them before they burn out.
Granted we have supermarkets, cars, big screen TVs, and houses that the ancient world could never dream of... so getting in deb
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No it's not, not really. (Score:2)
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Domus Depositum
Brilliant.
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Slavery and Exploitation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Slavery? (Score:4, Informative)
You're talking about the debt bondage called nexum [wikipedia.org], which was outlawed in 326 BC, pretty early in Roman history. It had no real role in the bulk of Roman history.
The condition of slaves in ancient Rome varied considerably. Some were essentially professional workers, who had jobs and could expect to earn their freedom while they were still young enough to start a family and have a free life. At the high end, several future Emperors were educated by Greek slaves. At the other end, some slaves were miners who could expect to live only a few years. Some were agricultural workers who had a rough life with little chance of advancement, but who could hope to at least survive. Rome was a slave society, with a huge percentage of the population either current or former slaves. They did almost every job available, and their condition was just as varied.
As for gladiators, the best guess is that you had a 1 in 9 chance of dying in any bout. This means that the mean survival would be 6 bouts. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] suggests that 20-25% of losers died. These numbers are all educated guesses, but the general point stands. A slave who was a gladiator would probably have to survive something like 10 fights to gain his freedom, and his odds of surviving that were very, very poor.
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Well, I guess it voluntary.
You are not permitted to sign away your basic rights. What constitutes basic rights is up for debate, though.
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Slavery does not have to be involuntary, nor non-profitable. As others have pointed out, people in ancient Rome would often sell themselves into slavery for money. Force is not a necessary condition for slavery, although historically it usually is.
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And when someone says global warming or evolution in the US there are other INCORRECT ignorant images that might come to their minds. That does not change the definition of the word.
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That does not change the definition of the word.
Actually, it does. That is how language evolves. Webster has to print new editions quite often to accommodate the changes. :)
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Yes, but is this case we are not talking about a change of a word, but an ignorant population.
Americans have not changed the definition away from "A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.", they simply do not understand slavery.
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Yes, but is this case we are not talking about a change of a word, but an ignorant population. Americans have not changed the definition away from "A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.", they simply do not understand slavery.
Americans understand the most recent definition of slavery, which was developed by our own historical practices, and has remained largely unchanged for the last 200 years. Even the Roman definition of slavery changed between the start of the empire and the end. To say Americans don't understand slavery because today's definition is different than the 2000 year old Roman definition is silly. Yes, they are ignorant of ancient Roman slavery, but not slavery in general.
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Americans never really even had slaves. Their addiction to cheap labour lead them to view Africans as not people and therefore where not considered slaves technically. This meant that American "slavery" was a completely different institution from actual slavery where slaves where people who just happened to be owned by other people at that time. Latter they might buy themselves out of slavery, and then sell themselves to someone else.
A black man was a black man regardless of if he was owned or not. He was c
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I suppose, if you consider accumulating a dowry for your daughter or purchasing land for your son to farm as forms of duress. Those wouldn't have been included in my definition, though.
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It's a publicity stunt (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, the recent trends in bankruptcy law that make it impossible to discharge debt unless you're rich, plus judges finding debtors in contempt of court for not paying and jailing them (aka debtors prisons 2.0) have me scared. This is all in America of course. We need to start breaking down the excesses of the protestant work ethic. Work ethics are good, but they can also be manipulated and abused.
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Our easily escapable debt is one reason the american economy has grown faster than european economies.
Once you completely wipe out in america, you could restart. It enabled americans to wipe out multiple times and take bold gambles. While a majority might just fail, enough succeeded to benefit the rest of society tremendously.
In Europe, once you wiped out once, you were done. It was very risky to wipe out and to take bold gambles.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
. 1. Bankruptcy is basically 8 years without credit. If you're a poor person that's a nightmare. No house and no car, both of which you need.
2. The lender should be expected to accept risk. It's funny how capitalists get shield from market risks by guys like you but workers are expected to suck it down. Workers pay for their masters bad decisions with lower standards of living.
3. Usury loans quickly become slavery. You're not really free if someone controls your access to food/shelter/health care.
4. People filing for bankruptcy have little money. They often can't afford the legal representation they need to avoid being taken advantage of. If they do hire a lawyer the settlement negotiated is often worse than the original loan terms. That's because there are hundreds of bankruptcy firms that just take your money and then take the first offer by the court. They pray on people trying to keep their heads above water by working 80 hours a week. I've known several people in that situation.
5. Nice to see you ending your post with the right wing's "Imma gettin' robbed by da poors" narrative that has absolutely no basis in fact. Well, I suppose giving all our money to 1% of the population WILL keep those damn poor people from stealing from you, if only because you'll have nothing to steal.
The way I like to put it is this: you're trying to get me to believe that a little kid with a sandwich that his mommy didn't pay for brought America to it's knees financially.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
In addition, if you can reaffirm on existing debt for those items which you need to keep (car, house).
My problem? People who got into debt for stupid things. No sympathy for them, all kinds of sympathy for those who have medical bills, family tragedy, etc.
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Doesn't sound like Russia, but another Superpower comes to mind...
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" 2. The lender should be expected to accept risk. It's funny how capitalists get shield from market risks..."
You're talking about the case when the government and Federal Reserve come along and "shield" certain wealthy elites from the consequences of their actions. That's not capitalism. It's called "central planning" and it's the antithesis of capitalism and free markets.
In a genuine system of capitalism, the lender and borrower would both assume the risks. If both parties endure a loss when a loan goe
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Not only doing whatever they want with it, but also reassuring them that they'll cover them if the loans go bad. If they had at least left that bit out, we wouldn't be in the crap we're in right now.
And comparing how banks are run vs. how communist countries are run, the communists sure look like economy masterminds. A German bank recently burned through a loan of a few billion within 2 weeks, a similar loan kept the GDR afloat for over ten years.
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you put a lot of effort into a post full of hate for the poor :P. Are you really that ignorant of why people file for bankruptcy or do you get paid to spew that nonsense?
Starting off the flames from the start, I see. No, I'm not getting paid to comment on Slashdot, and no, I don't hate the poor, having come pretty damned close to bankruptcy myself. Rather, I hate the people of all economic standings who think that if someone gives them credit they're free to forget about repayment and pass the burden on to the rest of society.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently involved in a bankruptcy lawsuit. A guy owes me a few thousand dollars, that went into buying his s
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2. Lenders accept no risk. They bundle bad loans together until they're so big that letting them go would wreck the economy, then demand 'Austerity' from the poor to pay for it. This is what really happened. What's more, they've be
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I hope you're not talking about public transit in the US, outside of large cities they give the term "suck" a completely new definition. Not that it was any better in a metropolis. When you are used to European public transport, the US sure looks like a third world country.
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The difference is that Mike can violate the agreement at will, and only be liable for money damages. His "shareholders" have no legal right to physically confine him - they only have a civil remedy in contract law. It is impossible to legally turn yourself into a slave (or other non-person) because a person always has the right to breach a contract.
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You're complaining that people borrow huge sums of money voluntarily, interest free for several years, and that there are societal and legal restraints which obligate them to repay it?
"Entitlement mentality", not servitude.
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What's wrong is that they can come after your family if you die or default, even when your family have not co-signed on your loans.
They should assume, I guess, since your parents had the money to raise you and feed you until you reached college age that they can be liable for your debts, too. Pish tosh.
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Explain to me exactly how your family becomes liable for loans they did not agree to--especially on your death, upon which federal student loans are forgiven anyway.
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He cant. The only case I am aware of something like that could happen, is that those debts could affect his estate; Im not an expert but I expect creditors would be first in line ahead of your family, regardless of what your will says.
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According to my grandfather, who lived in Burbank...
The way it works around Chicago is this: You get fairly rich, say a million dollars or so, maybe taxes of a hundred thousand. You die. The lawyer whose job it is to represent you finds any number of challengers, whom he pays to challenge the will. It doesn't matter how bad each case is, he just has to get enough sequential cases lined up to keep the will in probate.
He does this, until the estate is completely drained of its million dollars. At that po
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So who in this story is the scammer, who is doing the scamming, and who is supposed to be getting scammed?
I think what you're saying is that the lawyer gets paid $1mil and you (person inheriting the mil) owe $100k.
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There are other than federal student loans:
http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post.aspx?post=76403ee4-9604-480e-ad05-9f2cf2292cce [msn.com]
This story is about a guy who has exactly that problem.
Also, if you default (and did not die), I had read that your family can be held responsible for your federal student loans even if they did not co-sign, which I have not been able to find a link to confirm. This link seems to say I am wrong about the co-signing. It is co-signing that makes you liable. Mea culpa.
http://w [bankrate.com]
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That sounds correct; thanks for fact checking.
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I never had to take out a student loan. Might have had something to do with going to in-state schools, and working part time.
I believe my parents took roughly the same course.
And I have a fairly good job.
Part of the problem is this ridiculous mentality that you cant get a job if your degree wasnt from Georgetown. Sure, you can.... youll just have substantially less debt and perhaps a slightly lower salary. But hey, if you want to gamble on years of debt on the off chance your salary will be a few thousan
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In state tuition-- at least in virginia, and quick research indicates this is not unusual-- does not generally require years of debt @ 7%. I borrowed from my parents, and paid it off in ~15 months, if I recall, having taken jobs waiting tables and made roughly ~1/2 of the money back. This was from a technical school which cost for 1.5 years roughly the same as it would have cost for 4 years at an in-state college.
Right now, a virginia resident could attend UVA, VA Tech, JMU, GMU, or W&M for ~ $6000 /
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Then move to virginia. You will establish residency in 12 months, and benefit from a state with some of the best schools in the country (primary, secondary, and university) and a great job market. Average rent in the DC metro area with 2 roomates hovers around $7200 / year, but you can easily halve that if youre willing to tough it for a while.
So for an extra $15k (4 years of rent), you pay $30k for school rather than the 80k for school you are recommending (plus, I would assume that rent isnt free in flo
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No. Skip school, get the two mccrape jobs, and buy the cheapest plot of land you can.
Next, trade up to a construction / factory labor job. Ready Ice, a cement precast company, what not. At a shipyard, you can get paid to learn welding.
Meanwhile, biointensively garden that land.
With the welding, turn around and buy a mobile home. That's about the time you move out of your parents' home.
Pick one near a community college, and rent out to roomers.
Then, when you have enough money and income to live and go to
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I'm not going to claim that people aren't getting themselves into shitty debt situations with their s
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I'm just arguing the hyperbole in GP's post. According to CNN, the average starting salary for a new grad is ~$45k - a far cry from the $12/hour he's claiming. As I said, we absolutely need to keep an eye on education costs and keeping our debt under control, but calling the current situation indentured servitude
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It's not slavery, it's indentured servitude. And that doesn't make it any less stupid or wrong.
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It's not slavery, it's indentured servitude. And that doesn't make it any less stupid or wrong.
Seeing how slavery and indentured servitude are not legal, this is more or less a voluntary commitment on his part.
No one can take him to court and get the contract enforced.
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I am pretty sure this is only "legal" since no one is has tried take any of these people to court.
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Shear holders? Is this about the vasectomy?