AN, in a cost/benefit analysis, those who risk losing their lives have much more to gain by taking those risks. But you can’t compare those situations to a Joe Sixpack who leverages up to buy 4 “investment” properties with 100% LTV “liar” loans. Those are two totally different scenarios and two totally different types of risks and potential benefits.
True, some people have very bad luck that has nothing to do with their actions, and they are the ones I think we, as a society, need to help. In the cases where I’m making a judgement, I personally know the details of their financial decisions, and in many cases had warned against them. Yes, I feel perfectly okay in making judgements about their risk-taking and poor decision-making skills.
Taxpayers, consumers (who are paying higher prices for things in the face of stagnant/declining wages), and savers (in the form of lost interest income, as the Fed has kept rates artificially low) have already lost trillions because of over-leveraged investors of all stripes. How much more do you expect us to take? And yet, you will gripe all day about the much smaller losses in the pension funds whose beneficiaries had absolutely no say in how those funds were managed.
Yes, everyone has the right to do whatever they want with their money, but if their actions have the potential to cause harm to others, then we not only have the right, but the obligation to stop them before they cause too much harm.
