Sometimes, They Blame the Victim

Andrew Sullivan links, with approval, to Rob Horning who says:

Shelter is something you consume; it’s not an investment. Bailing out homeowners is rewarding the people who treated housing as an investment and not a consumption good, a fulfillment of personal need. Preventing foreclosures is often a matter of rescuing people from their failure to properly assess risk, not from some unforeseen natural disaster. Let’s not pretend this is any different from bailing out imprudent or inept investment bankers.

Andrew agrees, saying:

Every time the government protects someone or some company from the consequences of their own economic profligacy, the chances of future profligacy increase. It's vital that the government let the Big Three automakers go down, and vital that only minimal help be given for those so greedy or so stupid that they took on loans they had no way to pay off.

In an e-mail to Andrew, I heartily disagreed:

Andrew,

I am sick of you and some of your readers lumping all those who cannot
pay their mortgages together. And I find it disturbing you suggest
they are stupid or greedy. Some people went to a mortgage broker (who
is supposedly an expert) and asked "How much can I afford?" The
mortgage broker, instead of abiding by any ethical or moral standard,
gave an unrealistic answer. The buyer believed the "expert" and is
now screwed. In a society increasingly complex financially, it should
be no surprise some people must rely on "experts" to advide them.
When you take your car to a mechanic, is it your fault if the mechanic
gives horrendous advice regarding the inner workigns of your car?
When you go to the doctor, is it your fault if he tells you you need a
chemotherapy when all you really needed was radiation therapy? I
admit that there a many people who tried to make a buck and are now
paying the piper. And I admit that it might be hard, even impossible,
to tell your greedy idiot from my reliant tyro. But I would expect
you to admit the existence of the latter, and perhaps suggest a
solution for them. Would you support lawsuits against incompetent
mortgage brokers for negligence? Or would you consider that another
example of our overly litigious society?

As for the big three, I would ask that you offer a solution for the
possibly milliions of innocent workers who were not the incompetent
managers and officers before you blithely say the government must let
them "go down." Your macroeconomic theories are cold comfort to those
living in their microeconomic worlds. Some say a tough-on-crime
conservative is a former soft-on-crime liberal who has been mugged.
Some might say a big-government liberal is a former small-government
conservative who has a hard time paying the bills. The change is
often the result of an action over which the individual most adversely
affected had no control. You and I, Andrew, can currently pay our
bills. Will you be so cavalier if, through no fault of your own, you
suddenly cannot?