Cool. Florida is willing to pay for my "National Property of Law Abiding Citizens Going Down in Value Because of Double Stabbings Across the Street, Jackasses Causing Eyesores Leaving Liquor Bottles on Your Lawn and High Speed Car Chases Ending Up In Some Neighbors' Load Bearing Wall Fund*" I hope? Of course they're not. I would never want them to. I knew what I was getting into, buying in a higher crime area in a Class 4 Dystopian Shithole to help "revitalize" an urban area; just like they knew they were buying in Hurricane Alley.

Oddly enough, writing to my Congressional delegation using a similar analogy as above and ending with the terse line "Now where's my free money?" doesn't really get many replies.

*We can call it the NPLACGDVBDSASJCELLBYLHSCCEUSNLBWF for short.

I am impressed by your acronym, which is the most unwieldy I have ever seen; I hope that the people from the Guiness Book of World Records are paying attention.

There is always this interplay between the ideals of socialism vs. those of the free market.  Should the government solve people's problems for them, or should people be left to their own devices?  Societies that have tried to create all-encompassing socialist states have failed, because it's too expensive, and because human beings have been too corrupt to make such an idealistic system work.  Even so, the idea never completely loses its appeal, because it is such a lovely dream, that everybody is protected from the tragedies and failures of life.  Whenever we see people suffering, we (at least, those of us who are not sociopaths) always have at least some impulse that "somebody should do something about this" although that somebody may very well not be us.  We have more urgent concerns.

The free market also has a compelling philosophical basis.  By allowing everybody to suffer or benefit from the consequences of their own actions, we support the principle of individual responsibility, and motivate people to solve their own problems rather than using up limited social resources.

So far, the best we have come up with is some kind of compromise, which is to use some elements of socialism mixed with some elements of the free market.  But there is, of course, constant argument about exactly where to draw the line.

In this particular case, I think it is not unreasonable for the government to intervene in the mortgage situation.

One side of the argument wanted a tightly regulated mortgage insurance market, with government credit authority backing it up in order to guarantee qualifying consumers low rates.  The other wanted a private company free to meet the needs of the market by aggressively maximizing profits with non-traditional loans  So they compromised , and we got a federal agency run for profit by private investors with the implied backing of the US government should they run into trouble.  It was this implied government backing which allowed them to grow so big.

One side of the debate on coastal building wanted to limit where people could build, and bail them out should their homes be destroyed.  The other wanted to let people build anywhere at their own risk.  So they compromised and you can build anywhere you like, and the government will (sort of) bail you out.

Compromise.  It's what made this country what it is today.