On Jan 31, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Eric Walker wrote:
On Jan 31, 2013, at 8:54, Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
Take the mortgage melt down in 2008 and following, do you think
any intelligence was used by the financial industry. Yet these
people almost collapsed the financial system of the West, which
has led to the present financial situation. Stupid people now
have the power to stop civilization in its tracks.
Some of the world's smartest minds worked together to produce the
financial collapse. They had an implicit faith in the assurances of
free-market ideology and laissez-faire, which they had
unquestioningly imbibed since childhood, and they based their rent-
seeking behavior on those assurances with religious zeal.
What they lacked was simple common sense and concrete incentives to
avoid actions that are harmful to society.
Does what you describe not represent stupid behavior? People can be
self-serving, greedy, and without moral compass, but when they do
something that shoots themselves in the foot, I call this stupid.
Ed
Eric
