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Originally Posted by Berean

I think this is a good point. I'd add though that personal bankruptcy is part of a larger problem. Society in general no longer has much respect for property rights.

Look at any retail store. They just build in 10-15% overhead for theft and pass it along to the other customers. When an employee does the right thing and stops a thief, it's the employee that gets in trouble, and maybe fired.

When the cops are called for theft, and the suspect is even identified on store cameras, they still blow it off. Cops treat ordinary theft like jaywalking. Cops don't care, because their communities don't care.

Bottom line, society as a whole has been conditioned to think little of property rights (you didn't build that!), so it's not much of a stretch for people to declare bankruptcy, pass the cost to others, and move on without blinking an eye.

As a larger point though, the general lack of respect, makes it FAR more easier for GOVERNMENT to take people's property and money and squander it as they see fit for their politically connected friends.

Look at how many people right here on this forum defend the bailouts even though the executives and unions got rich off taxpayer money while the SECURED BONDHOLDERS had their money taken.

In a just world, private property would be respected as much as personal rights, including using deadly force to justly defend it. And don't think your personal rights are safe now either. It's a slippery slope, and we're already half way down it.

In a just world corporate pay would be based on performance and executives of failing companies would not walk away with eight and nine figure pay packages when their corporation goes under and their investors lose everything. In a just world my graduate level economics textbooks would not be published by McGraw-Hill, of which Standard and Poor's is a subsidiary. This isn't a just world. It's a world built on manipulating the system and sheepies buying every out-of-context POS explanation they want to believe in because the truth doesn't suit their taste. On the contrary, I would hate to see what our manufacturing base would look like now if we hadn't bailed the auto industry.