Skipping out on the mortgage has become the right/smart thing to do, at least for business. Think Tishman Speyer Properties walking away from 11,232 apartments in Manhattan. Yet, when individuals do the same thing, they kick up clouds of ethical questions. Some also try to heap shame on them. In HuffingtonPost.com, Rachel Beck looks at that strange difference.
The rules of business were always different from the rules of personal life. It's good for business to exile mediocre performances. It's heartless for families not to provide for their vulnerable members, including the aging. However, that might be changing. Perhaps the ethos of capitalism is rubbing off on real people. It makes no sense to sit out, perhaps for 10 years or more, an underwater mortgage. And, if an offspring keeps screwing up, sure, cut him or her loose or committed to a correctional facility. And can a whole family unit be in constant upheaval because a parent is losing it?
Capitalism is a brutal system. It had to come to this, that we people take on the values for our own personal lives and intimate relationships.
Comments