Via Cafe Hayek, see this succinct post at Depressed Metabolism, explaining the mindset of those advocating government bailouts of failing financial services firms:
Looking at the (long term) consequences of an act is an important part of individual decision making. This is so obvious that we are led to believe that such consequentialism is possible for society as a whole. Political consequentialism can take two forms. In its first incarnation, it is assumed that society is a collective effort toward shared goals. This view regards society, and as a consequence “the economy,” as one organism. A good example of this mindset is displayed by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell when he says, “Our whole economy you could think of as the human body and the credit markets as the circulatory system.” Presumably, any measures that are made to restore circulation will benefit us all...
The interventions that led to the current problems, and the proposals to solve them, suffer from the same activist, fanatical, mindset that looks at society and its institutions as something that can be “improved” through collective choice.
For more on the bailout, see the article on page 4 of our termly magazine, the Individualist, by Andrew Gimber.
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