“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” – Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda.”
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States.
America – and the manufactured housing industry – are suffering through the effects of both of these powerful insights.
How so? One example is the MH finance issue. Let’s soften or nuance the Gobbels quote, by noting that it applies to both a lie (a deliberately told false statement) as well as a misstatement or misunderstanding that’s often repeated.
There are scores of elected or appointed public officials that don’t ‘get it’ about manufactured housing. The same is true about MH from policy advocates, the media, and others. Again, a common example is MH lending, but we could talk about MH and land-lease, fire safety, windstorms, etc..
The result of repeated falsehoods and misunderstandings about MH is that too many (including a number who work in the MH Industry), WRONGLY believe some things about MH lending as:
– some or many wrongly think that numerous chattel loans made today are ‘predatory,’
– that higher interest rates are caused by greed, rather than by common-sense business math.
– that chattel loans are somehow bad for consumers, when in fact the GAO’s own chart reflects that MH payments are lower than other forms of housing.
I’m not sure how much good an Astro-turf campaigns of individual comments are to a regulator. To get the same message over and over at FHFA reflects numbers willing to do a few clicks. It would be noteworthy to the extent that if there are plenty of numbers, then it reflects that industry members are engaged on that issue.
At the same time, repetition that is well done is important, it can have value. The truth repeated (so long as it isn’t tuned out) has value.
But what is said and how it’s expressed, we know that one good comment can make a difference. I recall a teenager who wrote to a major department store. She said she wanted to see a modest yet tasteful line of clothing. It must have been quite a letter, because it was circulated by the top brass at that firm, and they did just what she suggested. FYI – the Lincoln quote was verified on BrainyQuotes, the Goebbles quote was confirmed on ThinkExist: that quote continued like this:
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels.
Food for thought. Here is the link to our letter to FHFA on the Duty to Serve issue. Let’s catch up this weekend, we’ll have a timely topic for YOU. ##
