Their choices are made in a media environment that does little to encourage savings, and a business environment that is only interested in fufilling quotas regardless of the consequences to their clients.
I agree on th two-edged sword, but the blade is very dull on one side.
I think you would agree that offering a crate of whiskey or a box of bottled water to a teenage party, and expecting them to make the right choice or suffer the consequences, is hardly Freedom of Choice.
There is an ideal world of freedom in which people make rational judgements, but in the real world it is intersected by marketing. Marketing, by its very nature, is against Freedom of Choice. Marketing wants to limit your choice. Marketing wants you to buy 'this one' not any other one.
This - to me - is one of the great paradoxes of Capitalism. You can't be me, I'm taken
I actually see, in the broader picture, marketing differently. Marketing is the tool that gives me the consumer all of the choices that I have. So take cars for example. Magazine and TV ads make me aware of all the choices I have. and it's up to me to choose from amongst them.
in sub prime, marketing keeps the consumer aware of the competitive offers among vendors of subprime--who might have the best terms.
but then again, to your point, on subprime it probably makes the overall prospects of owning your own home more appealling, and keeps that thought in your head. so in that sense it's negative, and your parallel to the case of whiskey for a teenage party is a good one.
One could say the same about war. Armies are manipulated as a group to achieve strategic and tactical ends, but the immediate consequences are individual - if you are one of the inevitable casualties. You can't be me, I'm taken
