[eloff]

Because when lots of people collectively make dumb decisions, then the whole macroeconomic picture goes bad and people like you and I, otherwise not involved find ourselves out of work because of general layoffs in a down economy.

One bad decision here or there won't make much of a difference, because it doesn't dent the whole, and it likely doesn't affect anyone directly connected to us. But many bad decisions is a whole other ballgame.

[jessaustin]

At the top of this thread, one could see the goalposts. At that point a "live and let live" attitude toward speculative investing was advocated, appropriately for a site like HN.

Here the argument seems to be that a transportation project in Dubai is somehow the same as Goldman purchasing CDSs from AIG.

[eloff]

And I agree with that argument. Where I must respectfully disagree is when you say the previous two major economic upheavals didn't affect you personally, as if implying they shouldn't affect anyone else either, which is silly. You probably didn't mean to imply that, but that's what people are going to read (myself included.)

[jessaustin]

I'm not against helping out "little people" who need help. A cursory examination of the bailouts, however, makes clear that nothing of the sort was ever contemplated. All payments were to giant financial firms. Briefly, certain shameless pundits claimed there would be some sort of "trickle down" effect, but no one really expected it.

When the general welfare is invoked to justify extraordinary action, but the action itself doesn't contribute to that at all, the original argument ceases to convince. Cui bono?