4. März 2008
Die Freuden der anderen
Steven Landsburg erinnert uns in seiner neuen Slate-Kolummne an Bastiat:
If you’re facing foreclosure, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to help. “If someone is willing to make a call to reach out,” says Paulson, “there’s a chance we can save their homes.” But Paulson can’t save these homes because the homes are not endangered in the first place. They stand to change hands, not to vanish.
None of these foreclosed houses is going to disappear. After a foreclosure, one family moves out, and another moves in. We see the sad faces of the people moving out, but we don’t as often see the happy faces of the new homeowners moving in. Nevertheless, those happy faces are out there, and we should not discount them.
…
I predict with equal confidence that a sizable chunk of readers will attribute my observations to a failure of compassion. But which is more compassionate: to care about the fortunes of the people who happen to be in your field of vision or also to include those whom you cannot see? The homeless are out there. The starving children in Africa are out there. The would-be new homeowners are out there. Each of them, in different ways, stands to gain or to lose from the policy choices we make. To exclude them from consideration—just because they happen to be absent from the front page of this morning’s newspaper—is not a compassionate enterprise.
Verfasst von SteffenH um 10:52 Uhr in der Kategorie Allgemein, Wirtschaft (Trackback)