Start Bailing

Well, I'm planning on getting three or four (maybe even five) credit cards and then running up a big old bill. Heck, I might sign up for an obscenely-poorly regulated mortgage too. And I'll buy a car on credit. Maybe a boat. Take that trip to Aruba I always wanted.

Because apparently everyone is in a "saving stupid consumers" mood. So I'll get lots of money if I just act really stupidly, right?

This is starting to sound a bit like those people who took out massive loans before Y2K in expectation that civilization would crumble and they'd get free money. Except in this case, it's not illegal. It's a bail-out.

Let me make my position on this crystal clear. If you do stupid things, you should probably have to live with the consequences. There is no Smart Police out there to check and make sure what you're doing is smart. So if you sign up for a loan and don't read the fine print, guess what, you're stupid and you are undoubtedly going to get sympathy and money from the government. If you spend beyond your means, you're going to get a terrific credit rating, and probably sympathy and money from the government. Anyone who spends, spends, spends is helping the economy, and so therefore we should encourage their stupidity by bailing them out.

I'm not saying we should let the economy crumble. Far from it. I am, however, saying that, while I don't have a lot of sympathy for predatory lenders, consumers ought to know better.

It is, to use an analogy, similar to playing the lottery every day for 5 years, then complaining that you've pissed a lot of money away for no result. Do we feel sorry for gamblers who lose? Well, probably we do now. Where's the personal responsibility?

If you're currently in poor financial straits because you were a working class schmo whose job was outsourced and then little Jennifer got cancer, my heart goes out to you. We should probably take away money from the government, from me even (though it's hard to get blood from a stone), to make sure that little Jennifer doesn't die of a treatable disease. We might even go so far as to take money away from other people and help you out with your house payments, which were perfectly within your means until you lost your job through no fault of your own.

If, on the other hand, you signed up for a mortgage with "Bob's House of Discount Mortgages, Savings, and Loan," and then bought three TVs, two BMWs, and that boat I want to buy, and now you can't make the payments because in the fine print it says that the company can adjust their rates to any rate they want at any time without telling you, then you know what? Screw you.

Likewise, if you're a big bank which invested heavily in Bob's House of Discount Mortgages Et Al, and now that Bob has run off to Aruba with his profits, he isn't sending you money any more, so you're going bankrupt and your CEO might have to take a pay cut, screw you too. The idiots who made those decisions should be fired, and their pay should go to paying people who are going to lose their jobs because of those idiotic decisions.

People are all about capitalism red in tooth and claw until it starts to affect capitalism's PR, at which point they're all about bail-outs. Know what? Screw them too. You think markets should be completely unregulated, so they can find their own levels because capitalism and libertarianism is the greatest? Hope you like it.

But likewise, other people are all about regulation, to the point where banks must decided whether people are being smart. Since when do banks have to be the Smart Police? It's worth it to them to do it in most cases, because smart choices with money usually lead to banks being able to collect on loans. But if they don't, exactly where is the accountability of the customer, who was stupid?

So I think I'll be really stupid with my money, and then people will feel sorry for me and offer to bail me out. And then I'll get to join the pity party too, and complain about being oppressed. I'm a white male; what other chance do I have to do that?

Represent

There's always been a lot of talk about representation in government. I mean, by us here in United-States-Land (and to a lesser extent elsewhere, although they've usually had a lot longer to talk about it). Taxation without representation is one of those little slogans that all schoolchildren learn but don't really understand.

But I'm not going to disabuse you of your notions about that particular slogan. No, I just mentioned it because representation is featured in it, and representation is the topic about which I want to talk. Because right now, there's a heap of talk about representation.

Women are currently complaining about the fact that they aren't represented in government (largely because Hillary Clinton didn't win the primaries). Black people complain about that too. So do various other groups, minority and majority alike. Because, see, as Americans, it's our God-given right to have people who look like us in government. If there aren't, per capita, precisely enough people who look like us in government, well then, we're being denied representation.

What a load. Because you see, I can and do vote. And yet there will never be a President who looks like me. Why? I'm under 35. I can't even have a Senator who represents me (I would have to be 30). And if I were under 25 (still voting age, last time I checked) I couldn't really have much of anyone represent me in government.

Or perhaps I should say, "represent," because that's not what the word "represent" means. Represent doesn't mean resemble. It doesn't mean look anything like. It doesn't even mean agree with. You can have representation which is totally in disagreement with you. We are not (indeed, few countries are) purely democratic, therefore we have representatives in government who act on what are supposed to be our best interests, but they don't necessarily have to do everything we say, nor do they have to look like us.

Look, I'm not arguing that only white men should be allowed to be included as representatives of the people. But by the argument that some people seem to be setting out, that's what I should believe, because I'm a white male. After all, I should be represented. The president won't accurately represent me unless he's a white man.

Instead of supporting a candidate simply because he or she looks like you, why not take a look at how well you think this person will actually represent you? Certainly, if you are black and feel that only an African-American can accurately represent you because only another African-American can know the struggles that you've gone through, then that's a good reason to vote for that person. If you feel that only a woman can represent you, because you're a woman, and only a woman can understand your issues, then vote for the woman.

The system breaks down a little when you consider that, if you're, say, of Pakistani descent and are missing one arm, there are no Pakistani amputees in the running this year. Likewise if you're a homeless dwarf. Or a hermaphroditic half-Swede-half-Melanesian. If you don't happen to fall into a demographic who happens to have a candidate running who resembles (I didn't say represents) them, you're sort of out of luck in this particular game. And you might have to choose a candidate based on something other than demographics.

Again, this is not to say that minorities shouldn't be allowed in government. Far from it. I will happily vote for a hermaphroditic half-Swede-half-Melanesian over a white man should the opportunity arise - provided that I agree with the hermaphrodite on the issues.

My suggestion is that we stop worrying about what these people look like, who they are, where they came from. Those things should only be factors if they affect the candidate's stance on the issues. So if a woman, because she is a woman, believes that my tax dollars should be used to fund research on breast cancer, that's important. But if she, because she's a woman, is viewed by some as bitchy, that's unlikely to affect my judgement of her.

Vote for a person who will represent you, not resemble you. I can't vote for a president who will be in my demographic, and neither can a lot of people. I don't let that bother me.