Thus said Stuart Jansen on Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:40:21 MDT: > I know it's hard to remember at this point, but I'm actually the one > that kicked off the whole McMansion discussion when I pointed out that > a lot of Americans are making disgusting, self-indulgent decisions.
Why do you care so much about the decisions that other Americans make? Are they not afforded the same freedoms in making dumb decisions that you are? Or do you prefer that their decisions are influenced by an omniscient power (like government) that knows better what they want than they do? > Why? Wouldn't the market correct itself? Do you think the market needs governmental help correcting itself? Who says that the market isn't already in the process of correcting itself. I would submit this very thread as evidence of the correction process. > For now, I'm still renting. This is actually probably the smart thing to do. Clearly you are not one of those that was forced into buying a home that was too large and on too small of a lot. When low quality homes are overpriced, the smart thing to do is rent; especially if one cannot find anything agreeable. But then, I guess that presumes that one has the ability to make those kinds of choices to begin with. > There's a limit to how often one can run back to the argument that > "People do X so they must want X." Sometimes "People do X because they > didn't have many other options." Let me correct my statement then. Builders build those kinds of homes because people buy them. Whether or not they want them I suppose is an attempt to infer some kind of utility. > And when the market fails, the role of government is step in for the > good of society. I guess you just answered my previous question. So you want government to come in and mandate some kind of quality controls; or would you rather they imposed price controls? Andy -- [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 9:45pm up 52 min, 1 user, load average: 1.14, 1.10, 1.02 /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
