Julia, you may have misunderstood the parallel.
I am not talking about the stock market at all. Not at all.
I am talking about loan brokers who sold these loans and surely must have know that they were unsound. I am talking about the people who took out these loans and surely knew they could not pay therm back, People who took out the loans and lied about their income. People who bought these absurd loans for investment banks and bundled them up into Mortgage backed securities. All of these people would surely have known that the emperor's new clothes were a sham. All of them proceeded along the path despite any moral qualms they had because of their own personal self interest.
Ardy, I say it's not a parallel because the people you're talking about chose their environment. I'm not concerned here with morality but with power. If I choose a morally questionable path, it is my choice. If I am subject to the effects of a morally questionable choice by others -- if I'm being judged by appearance rather than capability -- I am subject to someone else's power.
And in my defense I feel that I have repeatedly and specifically said that I oppose appearance based discrimination and feel that it is unhealthy for girls and I support trying to change it, and I specifically try to change it when ever I have the opportunity...
That's why I bother to talk to you about this stuff, Ardy. If I didn't think you "got it" to at least some extent, I wouldn't make the effort to converse (blunt, but true.) Again I think we sometimes suffer from the use of "you"; life would be easier if "one" could refer to one's actions without sounding a perfect arse.
And in that context I rather resent any implied responsibility for maintaining the situation as a matter of self interest.
And I hope I never gave you that idea, as it wasn't in mind at all. There is "how I think people see the world at a practical level" and "preserving that for one's own self-interest" - and those are very different things.
