[rangeofmotion]

But is that the type of society we want? One in which a rather large percentage of the population is dealing with those terrible choices regularly? And the rest of the population says "you should have been smart enough to not fall for it"?

Personal responsibility matters for sure. And to have freedom we have to allow personal responsibility rather than try and protect everyone from everything. But if someone comes up with a clever way to put a massive number of people in debt by leveraging common human failings, to the point that it threatens their ability to have shelter, do we not do something about it rather than allowing that clever someone to just become king (metaphorical)? Not to mention, wouldn't we want to head off both the growing apathy by some and the growing anger by others towards the rest of us lest it eventually threaten the country itself and its character?