I think there a "tragedy of the commons" sort of moral responsibility here to only take out loans you have a good chance of paying off as you theoretically raise interest rates for everyone else.
BTW: We've got to watch out for these financial guys, they'll try it again if they have the chance.
And the housing market really went off the rails because people were making stupid bets. Does the casino enable stupid bets? Damn right. But we don't blame them when a gambler loses all their money on a stupid bet.
I'm as pissed as anyone that bankers didn't go to prison en masse, but what they did was package mortgage debt up as more safe than it was. It was home buyers eating up easy money with no restraint that caused the pricing to hit bubble territory.
I think the only reason for that is follow the money. Casinos pay taxes. I'm trying to follow a machine learning mooc and I'm just realizing how much humans (specifically me) suck at classification and at pattern matching.
Planet money I think asked the question: if sugar is addictive, why isn't it regulated?
My questions are Why is alcohol regulated? Why is tobacco regulated? Why is cocaine banned? Why can't we have kinder surprise in the us?
Why is gambling a state monopoly? Why does a casino need a license?
We all don't agree on everything but there's plenty of blame to go around if you think of gambling as an addiction (and addiction as a disease to be treated rather than an excuse to kill people). I think of gambling is a disease, casinos are a "guilty until proven innocent". Sort of like Google's famous " don't be evil" motto which recognizes that an organization in this position is likely to steer towards being evil by default and only by constant vigilance can we prevent ourselves from being evil. In the case of many casinos, I think it is just a matter of cover my ass when they have programs against gambling addiction.
tl;dr I love the idea of personal responsibility but we can't throw people in prison for victimless crimes.
And I agree that sugar should be regulated and taxed, or that we should at least do more to educate them on how destructive it can be to health.
Sure, people make bad decisions. But how can they be expected to make better ones when the people that are supposed to be relied on for good advice give such bad advice.
Who has ever said that banks are supposed to be relied on for good advice? Hire an accountant for that, the banker works for the bank, not you.
Except that the price of houses rise when everyone else can take out loans beyond their ability to pay. You can't opt out of this game.
Not to mention that most of the people defaulting on their mortgages had the ability to pay - until they lost their jobs. Which they lost because of other people defaulting on their mortgages. The economy was a tinderbox.