Confucius was reading to one Zhou emperor a story from the book “The art of peace”, recently published by a fashionable philosopher. They multiply like flies these days. 

          “Once, I wandered into a village in the Eastern Provinces. Everybody was happy and well fed except for one man who was begging for food in the village square. I remembered the ancient proverb. If I give this man a fish, I feed him for one day. If I teach him how to fish, I feed him for a lifetime. So, I taught him the art of luring and catching fish from the sea.

          I returned to the village a few months later. I found the man on the shore with a boat full of freshly caught fish. I cherished the sight. Next to the boat was a vat of salt. The man took the fish from the boat one by one, salted it thoroughly, and then he threw the fish in the sea. He confessed that he is now even hungrier than before. He cannot go back to the life of begging because now he has a trade, with the pride and dignity that come with it. In the same time, he abhors salted fish. It started with events that happened before he was born. His grandfather returned an invalid from the Russian front. The country rewarded him with five acres of land and a lifetime pass on any train in the national railway system. He soon discovered a loophole in the deal: the weight of the luggage he could transport for free was not limited in any way. He sold his five acres and traveled to the ports by the sea. He loaded crates upon crates of salted fish and sold it in his hometown where it was considered a rare delicacy. Later he moved train loads of salted fish to all corners of the empire. The communists confiscated his fortune and sent him and his family to a reeducation camp in this village. Salted fish has brought ruin to his family.”

          Confucius went on and on, trying to explain to the emperor how freedom of choice is not ours to make. The choice is already made for us and we fool ourselves with the illusion that we are free. Our future has already happened before and our time is just one of an infinite number of replays. The emperor was growing impatient and he asked: “Is there a point to this story?” Confucius had a lot more to say but he sensed the irritation in the voice of the emperor. He did not want to bring the emperor’s wrath upon himself. He replied: “No, sire. I just wanted to say.”

          The point that Confucius wanted to make was that something must be done about the student loan debt. The practice of lending money for education started a long time ago. In the old days someone said: “Give a man a book and you feed his mind for a day. Send him to school, teach him how to write books and you feed his mind for a lifetime.” Young minds eagerly incur large debts to pay for the education that promises to free them. They soon discover that they have to pay back the loans even if the books they write don’t sell. If they default on the loans, they remain perpetual enemies of the empire. There are statutes of limitations for any other crime but not for student loans. Bank robbers get a sentence of ten to twenty years in jail. They get out sooner on parole or a pardon from the emperor.