[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.