Much as there is an eternal battle between good and evil being waged in the former-DDB’s soul, a similar battle between the pro- and anti-regulation sorts has been waged in argumentation for years. The pro- side are generally reasonable people, who at the increasingly radical fringes become militant treehuggers, meat-is-gender-politics people, and crusaders for Political Correctness. At the fringes of the anti- side are Republicans so conservative they’ve forgot to hate fags and have become Libertarians instead. Well, I suppose some actual Libertarians are in there too.
So this latter group goes around yelling “Choice!” and “Freedom!” and lambasting whatever seems to restrict either of those two holy artifacts. Sometimes they make good points. Often they don’t, and when they don’t it’s because they fail to consider that ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ are extraordinarily weedy concepts, no matter how carefully you try to phrase things. The example from this strangely named financial blog caught my fancy today:
Point 1: I’m assuming that if I was a degenerate crackhead who snuck into your neighborhood and mugged you for $50, the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page would want me thrown in jail. Now imagine that I’m a degenerate crackhead who took out a subprime loan to move next door to you, in an arrangement that I’m likely not going to pay off. I might not even make one payment. If I default you’ll lose 10% of the value of your home from the externality effect. Assuming your home is worth $300,000, there’s a 20% chance I default in 2 years (realistic numbers), and you lose 10%; 300,000*.2*.1 = I’ve just robbed you for $6,000 while the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page cheered me on. And that’s one house – I’ll have a dozen neighbors. Now mind you, the product was great for me – I got to smoke crack indoors, in a house I could never realistically afford, which was a big plus. The subprime lender sold my loan to a pension fund in Denmark for a nice fee. It goes in the win column for us.
I don’t know why I post these things. It makes me feel good inside to hurt others I suppose. Or to pretend to hurt them.