CA renter, TG put it very well in another post. People who “do the right thing” are the ones you’d be happy to share a beer with, and that’s about all we can decide to do.
Until now, I have felt quite content to live out my upbringing, which emphasized morals/ethics over minimal legality. I felt that I might lose out a lot in the short run, but only a little in the long run, and the satisfaction of doing the “right thing” made that long term loss OK. But when a very large % of all that I contribute to society (as represented by my earnings and savings) gets transferred to people who acted totally irresponsibly and to my direct detriment, and who lived it up big while I was carefully denying myself lots of goodies, it forces me to re-think.
Can I overcome that moral imperative I was raised with? If I do, the lesson I take from what’s happened is that I can have a great deal more materially. It’s a lousy incentive scheme. I do realize that, as people like me start to make the decision to turn to the dark side, our leaders will be yukking it up about ethics and morals and all that. But when it counted, when decisions had to be made about whether vast amounts of money would be transferred to people who acted irresponsibly, those same politicians said Yes, and screw the Moral Hazard issue. I won’t forget.
