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The Stories We Tell Reframing shifts, shifting frames Markael Luterra, Jan 21 If I am a landlord or a surgeon or a medicine maker, my market is not free. My customers will willingly pay their life savings and go into debt to access my services. If the market isn’t free, then morality applies. Or it certainly ought to. If I own an apartment building, and my per-unit monthly cost (fixed expenses plus a living wage for labor) is $600, and I’m charging $1500, and I’m buying fancy cars and more properties while my tenants tread water and rack up debt and abandon hopes of ever owning a home, then I don’t have tenants, I have victims. If I run a hospital, and all of my doctors and administrators have big houses on the hill, and a couple from the trailer park arrives badly injured from an accident that totaled their car, and I mend their bodies and then send them home with a bill that is three times what I charge my insured patients, and that bill wipes out their meager savings and lands them on the street, then I don’t have patients, I have victims. If I’m a successful, wealthy business owner, and my employees earn minimum wage and live in old RVs and qualify for food stamps, then I don’t have workers, I have victims. We can keep trying to implement systems and safety nets so the people who have had all of their wealth extracted don’t freeze or starve, or we can stop victimizing our neighbors already.