[adam_arthur]

So why blame the developers and not the government?

People lobby for different things all the time, it's the government that sets the rules. The only power public has is to vote out those officials, or lobby the other way.

There were structural, government induced factors that helped lead to the 2008 GFC in the US too. You could blame irresponsible buyers, or the banks, but it's the government regulation that is the only thing that can structurally fix problems. Blaming actors within the system devised by govt doesn't solve anything, however cathartic it may feel.

[goodpoint]

> So why blame the developers and not the government?

Because responsibility comes with power. Developers are hugely wealthy and have incredible lobbying/bribing power and they are happy to use it.

They know very well that "lobbying" and creating housing bubbles is not a victimless crime and they do it anyways.

Politicians still get blame for accepting bribes but they are not billionaires themselves and it's understandably not easy to push back.

[mandmandam]

I think the fact that you've been pointed to firm evidence of bribes, yet call the developer's actions "lobbying" says a lot about your good faith here.

In case you're actually reachable though - just because a government fails to stand up for its people does not excuse the complicit parties who "lobby" them to fleece normal people by the millions.

[adam_arthur]

It's simply an ineffective way of looking at the world.

The government is the one that sets policies, not the developers. To me a government official that accepts a bribe and makes far reaching policies in response to one is much more culpable and to blame than somebody making the bribe.

It's like if a company hired a lot of unqualified people and then blamed those people when it failed, rather than their system of checks and balances in the hiring process.

Focusing on the player and not on the rules of the game is simply a losing mentality, sorry.

The whole point of democracy is about holding government accountable when they make mistakes. Diverting blame to non government actors doesn't solve anything

[mandmandam]

I’m curious - in what other contexts do you apply this "logic" ?

If the guy who robbed your house and cleared out your bank account bribed the judge to go free, would you then feel that the robber played the system well?

Would you be arguing that he doesn’t need to go to jail, only the judge? Because "democracy"??

... I fucking doubt it.

And I imagine you'd feel even worse when you find out that the burglar and the judge have worked together to clear out entire neighborhoods.

So why excuse theft on a national (even international) scale?

[adam_arthur]

We're talking about a system here. The housing market.

In your example, it's like saying crime is systemically high, and thinking blaming the criminals will solve it. You can and should prosecute individual criminals, but it does nothing to solve the underlying reasons that crime is high.

High crime is likely due to structural factors that the government has control over, and you'll never solve high crime by jailing everybody. Jailing nobody would be a structural factor encouraging high crime, however. But one which the government can be held accountable for.

It's naive to expect to solve societal problems through "shoulds" and not through rules and legislation.