This is exactly what has happened in the Afinsa-Forum case. Up to a point, it makes sense: people tend to pay attention to loudmouths, and the state is the biggest one; “here I am to solve everything,” says the state and everyone looks to it and acquiesces. It is powerful, of course, and it is used to deciding over our lives. But power is not ability. And the state has a long track record of systematic failure, again and again, in achieving its goals. This is why the demands for more regulation are somewhat paradoxical. Did regulation keep the Banesto scandal from happening? Or Enron? Why do we keep asking the state to protect us?

 

If the state has one function, it is to define and Project our rights. All it needs for this is a civil and penal code, a judicial system and the police. In the on-going stamp scandal affecting some 350,000 people’s savings, the Attorney General has accused Forum Filatelico and Afinsa of operating a “pyramid scheme, lacking economic logic and destined to fail.” The Attorney General is absolutely right! What a pity it doesn’t feel the same passion against the country’s Social Security system, which works under the same “pyramid scheme, lacking economic logic and destined to fail.” Apparently, the state is only willing to go so far to protect us. Instead of fighting this social security fraud, it imposes it on us.

 

Some will say something must have failed to reach this situation; and it is true. The financial culture failed; if it had been more widespread, it would have limited the development of such schemes. The media failed; infected with politics, it doesn’t pay enough attention to other important social processes. But one thing is a society’s failings and another is its responsibilities, which do not affect everyone else who did not participate in this affair. This is why PP’s proposal to create a “guaranteed fund” ad hoc is just another piece of modern political art: self-interested demagoguery and populism, but paid for with the taxpayers’ money. It is an anti-social proposal, encouraging risky and unhealthy financial behavior; it sends a message to society that nothing matters, the state will always be there to take other people’s money to clean up the mess and make itself out as the savior. Let those who enriched themselves on the deal pay for violating economic and judicial law.