[gshulegaard]

Funny, I read his comment through a critical Economic lens and find myself in agreement. Capitalism is cold hearted (to use your wording)...there is no accounting for ethics in Supply and Demand models.

This fact is an underlying foundation for many regulatory bodies. For example the EPA establishes and enforces environmental rules in the best interest of society as a whole rather than allow companies to pollute ad nauseam which would be in their individual bottom line's best interest. This type of regulation is meant to correct factors outside of market actors which lead to an equilibrium that is sub-optimal for society.

You might say he sounds cold hearted, but that is unfairly judging an individual ethically for the speculation of an economic reality which has no ethicality.

[parzivalm]

To be fair, he stated that he isn't cold hearted in his original post. That is why I said what I did. The article wasn't some economics view into this topic, it was a look at the people. You shouldn't be looking at people struggling as an economics problem. You should be looking at it from a humanitarian standpoint.

You can talk about the economic issues all you want, but it comes down to the residents are the ones getting hurt. The people that took advantage of the situation in developing where they did are not getting hurt.