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Go back to my original example of people buying houses that they couldn't afford. One person making this bad decision is OK. Millions making it isn't OK. Pri

Go back to my original example of people buying houses that they couldn't afford. One person making this bad decision is OK. Millions making it isn't OK. Prior to the collapse the economic incentives in place in the mortgage industry were contrary to a healthy market and resulted in a collapse that affected the whole nation. Had better rules been in place the mess would not have occurred. If enough bad economic decisions are allowed to take place it can affect the whole country. A society has an interest in preventing such a thing from occurring. It's one of the roles of government.

dnautics 16y ago
"Had better rules been in place the mess would not have occurred." How about not having rules in place that created the mess? Why, for example, was the interest rate so low, making it artificially easy to take on mortgages? Why were home mortgage payments tax-deductible? You think that these economic decisions are made in a vacuum, but you really ought to look in to the political decisions that were made to push people en masse into a series of economic moves that were probably unsustainable. The notion that the most recent economic crises were a failure of the market is completely laughable. Ironically, it's exactly the notion that government is supposed to "prevent bad economic decisions" that has resulted in centralization of economy (via the fed, via subsidization of bank risk, by subsidization -i.e. stealth corporate welfare- of retirements through 401ks, IRAs) - so that instead of a few bad actors getting punished for poor choices, risk is socialized and we all have to bail out the rich guys.