Moral hazard is what got us into the Savings and Loan crisis, as bankers realized that the regulations had been eased, but their government safety net was as strong as ever.

Moral hazard is what told the mortgage industry that they could take huge risks, and their backers could rely, in extremis, on government funds.

Moral hazard is what's now telling the financial industry - and others like the auto industry - that no matter how bad you screw up, the taxpayer will cover your ass.

These industries should have been allowed to fail. The economic hit would have been worse, no argument, but what came out the other end would have been stronger and smarter. Bankruptcy laws are the machinery that takes carrion and turns it into fertilizer.

Liberals often say that profits in our country are privatized, while losses are socialized. In many cases, they're right.

A company that makes crappy decisions is punished mercilessly by the market, and this punishment needs to land hard. The smoke from a failed company should be visible for miles, and other companies and their stockholders need to see it.

There are people who, as kids, were never allowed to fail. Their parents protected them. They played sports at enlightened schools where nobody really "loses" a game.

These people turn out to be creeps obsessed with their own entitlement to everything they want. Sure as hell they can't handle failure when one hits them outside their old bubble.

Failure and stupidity are supposed to hurt. To create hardship, shame, and misery. That's what makes it something we try hard to avoid. We evolve. We learn how to avoid failure, and we learn how to get past it without being crushed.

Heck, in biological evolution, failure is fatal.

Businesses are no different.

"Too big to fail" is an obscene concept, and every time we bail failure out, the next cycle of failure is larger.