Fatale Abstraction

I heard a commercial on the radio recently for a monitored home security system called laser shield. In fairness, I can't say whether this was a local or nationally broadcast commercial. What caught my attention was the sales pitch. The announcer was saying that renters are umpteen times more likely to be burglarized than are home owners. The announcer then urged renting listeners to buy a laser shield system to "even the odds on this unfair statistic."





The thought that there is a fair number of times to have been burgled in life, of course, brought to mind Discworld and the Thieves' Guild of Ankh-Morpork. Only, in the book, it's viewed with irony and humour, as the idea of an agreed-upon number of times to be robbed is clearly ridiculous, right?





Right?


I just wonder what is wrong with people that they think if they are burgled, then it is fair that other people be burgled as well. Isn't this shifting the blame for the occurrence onto the victims, or onto people who haven't been victims, rather than taking the blame to the doorstep of those actually responsible for these crimes? And how nasty of people in the security business to capitalize on fear, rather than simply taking a common-sense approach! Why couldn't there be a straightforward sales pitch which doesn't rely so heavily on emotionally driven manipulation? How about "it's a neat idea to have a security system, and sometimes it will be a deterrent for thieves?"

The sad thing about common sense is that these days, it's less and less common.