| | Ethan,
It's true that the self-interested actions of brokers and individual mortgage holders can be viewed as willfully dishonest actions, but that doesn't mean that they should take the blunt of the blame.
Rand talked about how government turns business "to the dark side" and how a businessman's survival can then require the quasi-moral context of an emergency situation. In such cases, removing the ultimate cause of the "emergency" and allowing life to go back to normal is the number 1 goal. The ultimate cause is the best focus for moral evaluation of the situation. From aynrandlexicon.com:
A “mixed economy” is a society in the process of committing suicide.
If a nation cannot survive half-slave, half-free, consider the condition of a nation in which every social group becomes both the slave and the enslaver of every other group. Ask yourself how long such a condition can last and what is its inevitable outcome.
When government controls are introduced into a free economy, they create economic dislocations, hardships, and problems which, if the controls are not repealed, necessitate still further controls, which necessitate still further controls, etc. Thus a chain reaction is set up: the victimized groups seek redress by imposing controls on the profiteering groups, who retaliate in the same manner, on an ever widening scale.
Recap:
Uncle Sam pits Peter against Paul because Paul profiteered off of Peter under Sam's rules, leaving one with a sore Peter. Peter thinks it's Paul's fault when it's actually Sam's. If Sam didn't force Paul (and Peter) to play by terribly stupid rules -- if, instead, mutually consentual, free trade were allowed -- then Paul wouldn't profiteer off of Peter; because willfully dishonest action would become unproductive (as it should be).
Ed
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