We're all a little bit entitled, now and then. X happens and we determine that therefore, we now deserve Y. And sometimes, we're right. But even if we're right, it usually doesn't change the fact that Y just isn't the reality.
Life isn't fair.
But damn it if people are willing to settle for the reality, no matter how inconsequential. Every day on my walk home from work, I watch irrate motorists get stuck behind cars that don't know how to make a left turn, or how to find the accelerator, or how to tell when the light has turned green. And by the time the car in front figures it out and gets through the intersection, the light is just shy of red. And you would think that motorists would be sensible here - content to curse the clueless bastard and wait out the light. But something other than common sense takes hold - something I call Entitlement Logic.
Common Sense tells you: The light is red; you have not reached the intersection; wait for the green light.
Entitlement Logic tells you: The light is red because the moron in front of you doesn't know how to drive. If it weren't for him, you would have been through the intersection a minute ago. Therefore, you DESERVE to get though the intersection on this light cycle.
No less than half the motorists in Philadelphia operate according to Entitlement Logic, which is why as a pedestrian I never cross an intersection as the light turns to green without first checking to see how many cars are flooring the accelerator to get through on the opposing red.
But if you needed definitive proof that most people operate according to Entitlement Logic instead of Common Sense, just take a look at the present economic milieu. Millions of people taking out loans they don't understand to buy over-valued houses they can't afford. Home ownership used to be considered part of the American Dream; it was something you worked for and saved for, and when you finally achieved it you knew you had only yourself to thank.
Common sense tells you that if you make 30k a year, you really cannot afford a 700k house, and you especially can't afford it with 0 down. Entitlement Logic tells you that you are an American, and therefore you deserve to have the American Dream, and therefore you deserve to have your Dream House, and look here is a wonderful loan that can make it happen!
Everyone wants to leave all the blame with the lenders; and sure, the banks will probably eventually pay for their own operations according to Entitlement Logic. The point is that no person with Common Sense would believe that these loans could change the reality of what they can afford. It's about as rational as a guy taking a pill to make his dick bigger; 4 inches is 4 inches and even if the magic pill promises to give you 8 inches - at the end of the day you're still going to be 4 inches, just $100 (plus shipping and handling) poorer.
The loans in the housing market worked in a way that was like getting a magic pill that did in fact make your dick a robust 8 inches, only to have it fall off altogether a few months later.
There were moments in this housing bubble that you could not even fully pin on Entitlement Logic; for instance, you could only blame insanity for the fact that a berry picker earning 14k a year was able to purchase an 800k home.
But like free markets, reality is self-correcting. Eventually it reasserts itself as that which operates according to Common Sense, and everyone who made gains through Entitlement Logic is handed back to the reality - a reality which may be harsh at times, but is still much kinder when it is acknowledged.
There is not a part of me that feels bad for the people losing their houses to foreclosure. Perhaps because my own Entitlement Logic is that anyone without Common Sense deserves exactly what they get in the end.