Even if disease strikes you blind after graduation, existing law forces you to run a gauntlet of one degrading court appearance after another, to see if you might possibly qualify for a standard called “certainty of hopelessness”; and even then, there is only a slim chance to have the debt repudiated. I cannot think of a more depraved and decadent theater of cruelty than having to repeatedly prove before an audience and some smug judge that your life has become “hopeless.”

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 383