Bad Decisions

A few years ago, a nameless couple signed a contract with pages of purgatorial fine print that committed them to decades of debt so they could own a home.  The economy crashed, their house value plummeted, one half of the couple was laid off, and making ends meet became impossible.  Those who were not so unfortunate blame these victims and sum it up to “they signed the contract, so they made a bad decision.” 

Let’s roll back the clock a bit and look at the perspective of pre-crash days:

Just a couple of years ago, those of us attempting to warn friends against taking out questionable mortgages were ridiculed as conspiracy theorists.  Didn’t we understand that real estate always goes up?  Or that home ownership was the only way to guarantee one’s retirement?  That the longer you wait to buy a house, the further out of reach that house was going to get? The question of whether to become a home owner gave way to the much more presumptive “How are we going to get you in?” While government promised to encourage home ownership as a way of improving participation by poor people in the economy, banks came up with increasingly clever mortgage products that postponed the real cost of buying a house well into the future…

“What if interest rates are higher in five years?” I asked.“The increase in the home’s value will offset it,” the mortgage broker responded.“What if the house—for some reason—doesn’t go up in value? I asked.“Houses always go up in value,” she responded.“But what if the mortgage resets to a rate I can’t pay?”“Everybody has these mortgages, now.  Banks can’t set the rate so high that everyone defaults.  They won’t make anything that way.”...

Because these borrowers were generally less educated and less experienced with complex banking products, they were also less likely to fully grasp the implications of adjustable rates—often buried deep in mortgage documents only presented at closing, when there’s no time to read through them.  Other high-risk mortgage candidates included homeowners who could be induced to “move up” to bigger properties, and “flippers”—who bought houses with almost no money down hoping to resell them at a profit before the first payments came due. 

---  Life Inc., Douglas Rushkoff

People have limited powers to predict the future, even the experts among us.  Potential homeowners were thinking that houses were a solid investment, the economy was stable, and that they were getting fair and accurate information from their mortgage brokers and realtors.  Is it stupid to trust someone to give you true information?  Yes, in this economic paradigm!  Everyone is forced to make a buck off of your ignorance or lack of skill.  The more ignorant and the less skillful, even more profit can be made.  But, we can’t really function in a society where we have a paranoid distrust of all workers we transact with.  Imagine that at every single transaction you run through the scenarios of suspicion:  Do these noodles I’m about to eat have a tummy-upsetting ingredient that will drive me over to the adjacent pharmacy that is well stocked with gastro-drugs?  Is the noodle owner getting kickbacks from the pharmacy owner and from the gastro-drug manufacturer?  Will my iPhone combust so I have to buy a new one and pay for the burn on my hand? (http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/red-hot-smoking-iphone-selfcombusts-on-airliner-20111129-1o3zn.html) Does this shirt have non-toxic fibers so I won’t get a rash?  When my dentist tells me I have five cavities that need fillings, is she just trying to make a sale?  (This actually happened to me and I was thankful I had a convenient opportunity to get a free second opinion that indicated my teeth had no cavities, which is what I expected since I’ve had pretty good dental hygiene.)

It’s so easy to make a bad decision, even when you have good information like picking the tastiest sandwich on the menu.  It’s a lot easier to make a bad decision when factors around you conspire to get you to make that bad decision.  There’s a lot of money to be made in bad decisions. 

There is the other issue of how a bad decision is arrived at.  When I lived in Thailand, I was aghast upon hearing impoverished people spend two to three months of their total salary (via debt) to buy a new mobile phone.  Why would they make such an irrational purchase?  I used to sum it up with, “Idiots!”  Calling them idiots helped relieve my discomfort over figuring out why such a bad decision was made.

Someone declaring that a “bad decision was made” is a sign of a lazy thinker.  It’s a bit like a child shoving the mess under their bed and declaring victory over the Untidy Monster.  No more thinking required.  No more following the chain of causality about the reasoning behind those bad decisions.  And the sad part is not so much the laziness, but the outcome: a deep lack of compassion.  Those bad decision makers should suffer for their sins bad decisions.  The Westboro Baptist Church says that dead soldiers are the natural result of bad social decisions like giving gays closer-to-equal access to citizens’ rights.  Kids get addicted to drugs or involved in mischief because they are “black sheep.”  Problem solved, case closed.  The irony is that labeling an action a bad decision is itself the bad decision because it does nothing to resolve the problem, and in fact, it enables the harmful behavior to continue.  It is a reaction to one’s frustration with oneself from a lack of skill and/or intelligence to truly resolve the underlying problem(s).  

SIDE NOTE: There should be a research study in which Libertarians people who liberally attribute someone's suffering to bad decisions should get offered a license to a great new software program that has in its terms agreement a statement about the right of the patent holder to procure all hardware the products of said software are housed on, including those to whom those products are distributed to (I plagiarized this idea from Monsanto).  The terms should be quite lengthy, coded in legalese, and the software should be something that is a "must have."  I would be interested to see how many people "agree" to those terms.

The roots are deep in decisions we make, and it is difficult to tease out all of the factors.  In looking more deeply at why some Thai people overextended themselves to buy a mobile phone, a few possibilities surface.  Thais have strongly interconnected social networks that advantage them (increase their access to goods/services that promote their survival and well being).  Such strong social networks come with costs that relate to maintaining their membership in a peer group.  If they fall too far behind, they may find themselves without access to that peer group and its resources.  If having a mobile phone is part of that cost, then it may be entirely rational to make that purchase.  Or what about the fact that low-income workers rarely have the opportunity to afford the things the free market is supposed to “provide:” creature comforts?  These workers live austerely day in and out (while seeing extravagance in every billboard, poster, and on TV).  They earn just enough to survive.  If having a small piece of the technological pie makes them feel a little less like life is so dreary, then the purchase is a rational decision.  This is the common advice of dieting so that the diet is sustainable.  Have your cake and eat it, just not every day!  Those who ruthlessly deprive themselves finally relent to their cravings and they abandon their diet.

Of late, there is a lot of new research into epigenetics explaining how nurture affects nature.  Nature (DNA) and nurture act together in a constant dynamic interplay that lead to physiological, physical, cognitive, and emotional output.  One day, you are full of energy and very “productive.”  The next, you can’t seem to focus and chide yourself for not being “productive.”  There doesn’t seem to be a reliable pattern to these swings in energy and mental focus.  Even if you think you have learned how your body systems work, there could be an unpredicted environmental upset that challenges this “reliability.”

In this study, the environment at young ages affected gene expression much later in life. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/living-conditions-child-may-imprint-themselves-your-dna-life  Does the child born to a stressed-out parent who then has their “delayed gratification” genes turned off and battles this problem throughout life deserve to be convicted as a bad decision maker?  This is oversimplified extrapolation, but the basic issue remains the same.  Most humans born today are just “bad decisions” made by impoverished and/or uneducated people.  Those kids are punished for simply being the product of that bad decision and now they must pay the price, which is a debt that lasts a lifetime.

Our Hollow-hearted Neighborhood

A 65 year old man lives near me.  Physically fit and socially active, he is able to live independently.  He has lived in his home for 26 years and has earned his living through a specialized trade.  Business has been steady for him for most of his time as a craftsman, until a few years back.  Since that time, he has struggled to make ends meet.  He has been, as far as I can tell, mostly generous with his neighbors and his church community.  What he lacks in intellectual volume, he makes up for in heart dimensions.  (I have only known him for a couple of years, so I cannot determine if his intellectual capacity has been diminished over time by aging, lack of mental exercise, or exposure to toxic chemicals in his trade.)  As he struggled to pay his bills over the last several years, he began to fall behind in payments.  His church community did not help him.  God didn’t give him a stipend either (jest).  Desperation coupled with a lack of awareness about modern tactics to exploit people like him, he fell for one of those infamous “you won the lottery, but must pay us to claim your prize” scams.  I tried to warn him after he had already invested money from himself and his family who found the scam credible.  Ultimately, it was revealed that it was indeed a scam, and he was not able to recover the money.  His relationship with his family was severed by them (in their anger over their losses), and so he was left to his own devices.

His house went into auction, he was scraping up any jobs he could get, and finally his truck broke.  The damage was around $6000 to repair.  He had no money left, had a terrible credit score, and was not able to get himself out from under his mounting debt.  An eviction notice appeared one day, and he tried to work with a lawyer to stay in his home.  A few weeks later, the sheriff came to tell him he needed to vacate the house.  The sheriff also explained that many scam artists are targeting victims to pay them for legal work to save their homes, when in fact they are just exploiting the homeowners’ ignorance and distress. 

I wish I could help him, but I have a house full of roommates and there is no space to accommodate another person.  I am also looking for work/income, so helping him financially is not an option either.  Instead, I just watch the savagery of our economic system twist itself ever tighter around his neck with his gasps for help going unanswered.  I realize my activism efforts won’t help him or anyone in the immediate future, but I hope that they will help future generations. 

Proponents of our current system would like to argue that it is his fault for not being smart enough, for not saving enough, for not being skilled enough to pick up other work, and for being too generous when he should not have been.  Our economic regime is a game that everyone must play because there is “no alternative” to the “free” market.  Just like in sports, some people play well and excel, while others are less adept (at that particular game) so they either get shunted to the side or develop their skills somewhere else.  Non-athletes may not be admitted to the top tier of sports teams, but they do not have their means of life cut off.  In our economic regime, your access to life resources depends on how well you play the game.  Losing is synonymous with death.  It is the ultimate penalty. 

When you can use the lens of an anthropologist, the game is revealed for what it is: brutal, competitive, uncompassionate, and entirely unmoored from the “life ground”.  The savagery of cultures from the past seems not so ancient when properly juxtaposed to our current economic system. 

What if I proposed that all access to means of life was determined by one’s ability to throw a discus?  The further you could throw it, the more resources you got.  Those who had less genetic power to grow their muscles would be starved, which would then make them even less likely to grow muscles.  Their spiral of downgraded access would leave a trail of misery until their deaths.  Such an economic system seems so ridiculous to us now, but after generations, it would seem inherent to our culture.  Justifications would arise for why the system must be preserved and how it is “fair.” Revolution would be too radical and upsetting; besides, everyone had a fair chance to develop their discus throwing skills. The anthropologist would see the system for what it was: an arbitrary system of rules that leads to great abundance for some, but leaves many destitute.  The anthropologist would have no existing prejudice about the “deserved” nature of those with muscles and discus throwing abilities.  It would appear to be exceedingly contrived and divorced from its purpose to provide people with access to life-advancing resources.

So, while humans struggle to find their bearings in understanding our global dehumanizing economic paradigm of money-for-more-money, my neighbor gets tossed out of his home into the hollow-hearted social body.  I do not know what will happen to him and try to not speculate much.  And while my neighbor’s situation forms part of my local perspective, there is the reminder that his proliferation of despair is more benign than those who struggle to get enough calories and clean water every day. 

There should be enough examples to provide the coup de grace to this barbaric social system, which dictates the prescriptions and proscriptions for resource allocation.  Without the correct diagnosis, uneducated prescriptions will merely modify the system’s disease pattern instead of resolving it.  Awaken your inner anthropologist as the first step.