Gonzalo Lira blog (via Instapundit): "What’s really important is that law-abiding middle-class citizens are deciding that playing by the rules is nothing but a sucker’s game."
posted by Helen at 8:52 AM
Monday, October 18, 2010
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15 Comments:
The American public is cordially invited to stop making rule breakers into heroes.
Google "Ryan Tucker" and "Bryan Boyd" for a good example and pay close attention to Dick Verneil's comment about tucker's criminal behavior.
GoB, we're a nation ruled by gangsters. We regularly elect people we know are gangsters.
I didn't figure this out until around the year 2000.
In the US and most of the world, winners are selected. Hard work and even material success don't really matter that much. If you start to achieve success, the select on top will just step in and squash you.
Everything is designed to take what you produce and give it to a selected cadre of "winners." You'll slave away. You'll have nothing that's yours, in the end. You'll essentially pay rent on your own life.
There are only two basic responses. You can stop working hard, deny the country your productivity and creativity, and just chill out. That's what I've done. We live in a time of unprecedented abundance. You can have unlimited amounts of leisure.
Or, you can get yourself into a job that's heavily regulated by government, get your government-recognized credentials, and then be one of the boots stomping on a face forever.
Which rules are people choosing to play by? There are cultural rules, where breaking them has no consequences other than disgust from family and neighbors. There are legal rules, where first you have to be caught if you break them to have consequences, and then you have the option to hire a lawyer and see where the chips may land. Then there are moral and ethical rules where the consequences for rule breakages are between you and whatever God you like. If you are blindly following some sort of playbook without questioning what you are doing and why you are doing it then you only have yourself to blame when things go wrong.
And there are spiritual rules. I think the Maker of all set up the universe in such a way that there are definite benefits for obeying the 10 commandments.
Trey
I've tried to compile a timeline of events related to this fiasco. It's been a very long time in coming and it's looking increasingly like an organized effort to pillage the productive classes.
It should come as no coincidence that the Community Reinvestment Act which conservatives have attacked came not long before Glass-Steagall was almost completely repealed. The idea there was to have the productive classes' deposits used to fuel the mortgages for those covered by the CRA. The banks were then given the profit incentive that came from letting commercial and investment banking merge. Wall Street benefited from the influx of Mortgage-Backed Securities. Congress profited from its connections.
This whole crisis has never been about the common man. It's been entirely a top-down crime against the productive classes.
If middle America keeps up with its kindergardenesque notions of fairness and doesn't demand that the law, as written, is enforced, there will be no turning back.
I heard a local radio talk show host tell how a friend of his quit paying his mortgage so he could qualify for one of the new government mortgage programs. The friend was not having financial trouble, just had figured out how to take advantage of a government program.
The more government gets invovled, the more they screw things up. Because, as Jeff Y pointed out, the politicians are basically a bunch of power hungery gangsters. Thus, they write the laws to benefit themselves and their friends.
I don't know, Trey, coveting my neighbor's ass helped motivate me to become healthy and fit. But nobody living around me has a manservant or a maidservant, so I'm pretty safe there.
God of Bacon and Jeff Y:
It's both not as bad as you think and much worse. Read this: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html
If one makes a deal with a bank and agrees to take out a loan, then refuses to pay that loan under the terms set forth then they wouldn't necessarily be law abiders. Just because one is white, worked at the same job for 30 years, loves golf and haven't been caught breaking the law in the past doesn't mean they can't break the law at present or in the future. What these people see in themselves and what others might see are 2 different views.
Good one BarryD. I laughed.
Trey
"Become a lawyer Sonny. One lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
The Godfather
bureaucrats love laws, by-laws, policies, edicts, regulations, rules, guidelines, etc. that they can put between you and your money.
things haven`t changed much in a thousand years.
the lord lives in the castle and we live in a small village policed by goons.
he eats meat and we eat out of a packet thrown in a microwave.
It is no moral crime, to mail the keys in. Business is business, you didn't buy the house from your mom.
Two suckers wise up, that's news? They were idiots to buy that house.
Behind four walls of stone, the rich man sleeps
It's time we put the flame torch, to his keep
Burn down the mission!
Everyone's being a little harsh on the couple in the story. I see comments like "A contract's a contract" and the couple should abide by their end of the deal.
Well, they did. They applied for HAMP assistance, and were approved for a lower rare and mortgage payment. That's the contract. Then the bank changed its mind, and said, "No, as you were."
The BANK broke the contract, not Brian and Ilsa. It's not like the couple bought at the top of the market, and then turned around and told the bank, "We changed our mind."
Brian and Ilsa did everything by the book. The bank is the one playing ducks and drakes with them, holding them hostage by threatening them with forfeiture.
The ordinary middle-class is realizing a couple of things:
1.) a good credit report doesn't mean much (you only need one to buy a house, really), and
2.) home ownership isn't a necessity (you can always rent).
And if banks, or government, attempts to hold people hostage with threats of withholding the above, there's a good chance that people will eventually resist, and say, like George and Ilsa, "F**k you: do your worst."
Anarchy: it's not just for students and hippies anymore.
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