I can’t help but think of the hundreds of thousands of victims of rape. Set aside the children, a very large cohort. Few of these women were jumped by strangers in a dark alley while wearing male-attractant clothes. Most of them are raped by male family members, or friends they trusted, or dates, or bosses, or mentors. Women cannot avoid being in these situations. Yet they are still, even now, blamed for being raped. Even more commonly, their experiences are denigrated or denied. In many cultures, it makes them objects of disgust and uncleanliness, bringing shame to their families.
I think this is the center of victim-blaming right here, where it all emanates from. From this core response, comes the belief that whatever misfortune befalls you, you caused it. It seems to me impossible to separate out the statistically much smaller set of idiots, who take selfies with moose, and eat pills from the jar being passed around at the frat party, and try to pull down dead trees with a rope hooked to their sedan bumper. And all the people in between.
You totally got the overall point of my post: Excessive prudence is a vice. And deciding where “excessive” is is hard. And, as you say, is also a matter of personal taste.
It was just my summation sentence that was meant to encapsulate the idea that is suspect. Read it casually and it’s clear. The closer you look at it, the slipperier its actual meaning becomes as the various clauses don’t quite fit together the way they at first appear to.
Harry Markopolos literally went to the SEC…more than once…to show that Madoff’s profits were impossible unless he was making things up. It was math and the math simply did not add up. The SEC ignored him.
There were plenty who invested with Madoff who were experienced and savvy investors who should have known better (and probably did but turned a blind eye…at the least they failed in basic due diligence that is their job to do).
His calculations of Madoff’s trades revealed that there was almost no correlation between Madoff’s stocks and the S&P 100, as Madoff claimed. Markopolos also could find no evidence that the market was responding to any Madoff trades, even though by his estimate Madoff was managing as much as $6 billion, three times more than any known hedge fund at the time. Given that Madoff’s supposed trades should have had a substantial ripple effect on broader markets, Markopolos suspected that Madoff was not even trading.[4]
Apparently in some locations all this will accomplish is getting your windows broken so that people can get in and steal anything you might have left in the car.
And in other locations car thefts are really rare even if the car is left unlocked. (Such locations do exist; I live in one.)
The other factors I mentioned in that post still apply. At least, unless you keep your gloating to yourself.
However, I will agree that sometimes it’s the person’s own damn fault. But that’s mostly for things like teasing the alligator or jumping the polar bear fence or trying to watch the storm from the edge of a cliff known to crumble in storms. Or, yeah, looking at the sun without the right glasses. Not for most things involving the agency of other humans.
while I’ll get flamed for this, when you’re drunk and drive, the fact that you’re drunk doesn’t absolve you from responsibility; so if woman gets drunk–voluntarily–and then alleges that she did–or didn’t–give consent (buyers {next day} remorse) to sex, shouldn’t she be held responsible for her actions?
You fall to your death while attempting to Free Solo El Capitan? What is there to blame other than yourself?
You get carjacked because you were foolish enough to stop at a red light, or because you exited your car in your own driveway? How can you be blamed for doing completely normal things that we all have to do just to make our way through life?
Blame also needn’t be a zero sum game, though it seems like it is. I can say that leaving your purse in an unlocked car is foolish without absolving a thief of their responsibility.
I can also be considerate regarding women who have to follow 1,001 rules of personal protection 24/7 because men can be violent animals. You forgot to follow rule #248, don’t get too drunk when men are around? You probably did 20 other things that night to protect yourself that I never have to think about.
Yes, Madoff numbers were impossible due to how the funds were managed. However, it is quite possible to get that sort of returns over the short term. Just look at Bitcoin for example.
We are talking elderly here. It is possible to have entered a contest and forgotten.
