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> Those companies have all said that IEX will introduce one more complex wrinkle that will end up benefiting one set of market participants over another, rather
by danharaj 11y ago
> Those companies have all said that IEX will introduce one more complex wrinkle that will end up benefiting one set of market participants over another, rather than leveling the playing field.
Is there a notion of fairness that is both canonical and pins down one market structure as fairest?
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoI don't think there's any such notion of fairness. But if there is... There's a saying to the effect that "anything is difficult to explain to someone whose income depends on not understanding it". The hypothetical perfect notion of fairness will face many people giving fine-sounding but self-serving explanations of why it is not actually fair.
- danharaj 11y agoI agree. There's also that fairness can be applied to the social structure that generates the rules for the market. Suppose that there is a fairest market structure. We may even call it the "free market". It may be the case that you can enforce the structure of the free market on everyone else, but a lot of people would be rather angry with you if you did it like a violent dictator. So it may be the case that a system that tries to enforce free market conditions must be allowed to deviate from that ideal in order to be itself fair.
- brudgers 11y agoI'm not suggesting that the proposal is more fair. But in the name of fairness an unfair system must be changed in ways that benefit some system participants over other system participants. Likewise I am not suggesting that the existing system is unfair. Only that the argument that some participants will benefit from changes more than others does not imply that the new conditions are unfair.