Bungee Jumping and Investing

A while ago I wrote a post called What Caused the Financial Meltdown? A Guide to Understanding the Collapse in 3 Hours, in which I wrote:

@1:19:45 black woman “I’m being held accountable for my bad choices. But who in that industry is being held accountable?… I’m stupid, but you’re guilty. You’re literally guilty.” Wow. And she’s not guilty for lying? It is this absolute lack of personal responsibility that creates this mess in the first place. People naively think we have reached a certain place in the progress of society where we should no longer have to actually worry about making catastrophic, bad decisions. There will always be a safety net, so I don’t have to worry. This is what “moral hazard” refers to. It is this idea that you are not really at risk for decisions that you make in life. There will always be a safety net to catch you or a safety regulation to keep you from making bad decisions. For example, see Schiff’s comments about FDIC @38:13.

A news report I read this morning reminded me of what I said above.

On Dec. 31, Australian tourist Erin Langworthy became one of thousands of people to try bungee-jumping off the bridge that connects Zimbabwe and Zambia, within sight of the tourist mecca Victoria Falls. It’s 364 meters of sheer gravitational pleasure, followed by a gut-wrenching jerk just feet above the rapids below. The only problem, for Ms. Langworthy, is that her bungee cord broke and she fell into the Zambezi, which, in its quieter areas, is infested with crocodiles.

The reporter went on to make a few comments about being safe in Africa:

One: Tourists who come from litigious societies such as the United States may have an assumption that an activity is safe, because it is allowed to exist. Such an attitude may be reasonable in the US or Australia, but it doesn’t necessarily work in a country such as Zambia, where civil court cases can take decades to resolve.

Living in a nanny-state takes it’s toll on a person’s common sense and personal responsibility. But how could we ever survive without a nanny-state to protect us?

Langworthy’s plunge reminded me of the anecdote of a friend in Johannesburg, who took his clients on a year-end corporate junket to Victoria Falls. The last event was to be a bungee jump off the Victoria Falls bridge. All but one of the clients took the plunge. The one who didn’t jump had asked the bungee operator what would happen if the bungee cord breaks. The tour operator grinned: “We’ll replace it.”