Sometimes I wonder if I’ve heard things right, or if my understanding of what has been said is faulty.
Like when, this morning, a commentator on the radio stated that the cause of the world banking crisis was that people borrowed more money than they could repay. I drew in my breath sharply and waited for the other participants in the programme to disagree or, at least, to seek clarification. Not a word was spoken.
Now, it may just be me but I think that this statement completely reverses what happened. If a person borrows money and fails to repay it, the goods or securities against which the loan was made are forfeit.
I feel deeply for the borrower in such a situation. His pain is real, and human, but it’s his problem. Sure, he may have borrowed too much, or failed to insure against his inability to pay, but the story needs to end there, when the bailiffs call.
I cannot bring myself to believe however that, should the value of the forfeited goods fail to repay the loan, I should somehow add to the borrower’s pain any personal responsibility for harming the interests of the lender. It’s the lender’s business to manage his affairs better, up to and including carrying insurance against loss.
If, by some twist of logic that I fail to understand, it is right that blame is parcelled out in this way, with the customer always being at fault, then I can’t help but to conclude that there’s a basic flaw in the system and that those who’ve held all along that capitalism holds the seeds of its own destruction are, finally, justified.
Perhaps, after all, the t-shirt slogans are right. Property is theft.
But, what do I know? I’ve always held the belief that a philosophy which can be expressed in a nutshell rightly belongs there. If it turns out that the inmates are running the asylum then we all of us need a new t-shirt.
