Collateral crisis psychology

Lately I've been talking to a lot of people about the collateral crisis going on in the banking sector and I have to say the average person is so savagely ignorant about it all.This is despite the average person having quite a lot at stake here Unfortunately the truth of the matter is complicated and most people are far too lazy to figure it out and the legacy media just isn't willing to tell them. In more extreme cases the legacy media is pumping exit liquidity for vested interests and is telling people the exact opposite of what they should be doing. A lot of people are also in various states of denial since the situation is presenting people an uncomfortable situation where they will need to reconsider their deeply held beliefs if they wish to succeed. Denying that a paradigm shift is happening is easier that changing your entire investment outlook, though it might not be as profitable.

Due to ignorance and complacency combined with a large amount of greed I think a lot of people are going to lose out big in this current recession. In the upcoming crisis a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, this is already entirely predictable. But good luck telling anyone this. One thing I find difficult is that being kind to people is not the same as being nice. Telling people uncomfortable truths, even if these are very much going to help those people out, can lead to people hating you. People still love to shoot the messenger because to them the goal is to reduce short term psychological distress and the long term just simply isn't a factor for these people. We repeatedly see evidence of people sacrificing their long term wellbeing for their short term psychological comfort¹. This meme I think is a perfect summary:

The hardest thing I find with these people is not treating them with contempt. When convincing people to do the right thing it's hard if you are contemptuous of them, after all your thoughts are less private than you think. Many of these people are just brainwashed and/or stupid and in some limited sense their ignorance is not entirely their fault (although partially it is and a general lack of accountability is a massive problem in the modern world). After all most retail financial advice is bullshit and most people don't know how much of a ride they are being taken for. Now I don't expect people to know about esoteric topics, after all not knowing is the fundamental human condition, we are all ignorant about the vast majority of things². But it's the rejection of wanting to learn that's most grating aspect of many people in the financial space. With matters of money many people think they already know it all while in reality nobody does.