I was reading this post over on Stan's blog about a guy in Britain who rented out his Ferrari to an exotic car rental company. Somebody rented and then crashed his car, and the rental company owners did a runner with the insurance cash.I went and read the article on The Sun's website. Then I started reading the comments at the bottom.
The vast majority of the commenters (all British, it appears) blamed the Ferrari owner... joyously and happily blamed the Ferrari owner. They blamed him for being (a) too greedy, (b) too rich, or (c) too stupid, and pretty much perfunctorily declared that justice had been served. I think if I had to select the perfect comment out of many, it would be this one:
No one needs to earn so much money they spend over a hundred thousand on a car. There are a lot of people that can't be bothered to work and get given things handed on a plate but there are also so many that get far too much. The only way one person gets rich is by another becoming poorer.I really think that if you ever wanted to point out the fundamental, deep-down differences between British and American ways of looking at things, these several dozen comments are the gold standard.
2 comments:
"The only way one person gets rich is by another becoming poorer."
This is absolutely wrong and is founded in the mistaken belief that all trade is win-lose situation, when in fact virtually all fair trade results in "win-win" situation. The owner is a victim, but it may be only a civil violation.
After reading the comments it seems the Brits and Yanks are both a very angry society, it's just that the Brits blame the driver and the Yanks would sue whoever they could to get out of it.
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